The Israeli prime minister on Wednesday rejected the US president’s suggestion to ask him to drop judicial reform, saying Israel makes its own decisions.
It is a rare disagreement between the United States and Israel, two allied countries, marking, according to the Associated Press, a friction even after Netanyahu suspended the proposal on justice reform, after strong protests over two last days.
Questioned by reporters on Tuesday, Joe Biden said Israel’s prime minister should drop the proposal.
“I hope it goes [da proposta]”said the US head of state.
In the same statement, Biden also sidestepped the US ambassador to Israel’s suggestion that he broached the possibility of an official visit to the White House by Benjamin Netanyahu.
“No. Not in the short term,” the US president said, referring directly to the suggestion made by the US ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides.
Today, Netanyahu responded that Israel is a sovereign state and that it “makes decisions according to the will of its own people and not through foreign pressure, even from the best of friends.”
The Israeli prime minister’s response to the US president comes in the same week that Netanyahu announced the suspension of the legislative proposal “to avoid civil war.”
Since last week, protests against the Israeli government have intensified significantly in the streets of various parts of the country.
“Hopefully the prime minister (Netanyahu) will act in a way that he can try to reach a compromise. But we still have to wait and see,” Biden told reporters during a visit to North Carolina, United States.
Netanyahu and his ultranationalist allies announced the new proposal to change the judicial system in January, shortly after the inauguration of the new government.
The proposal sparked the biggest political crisis in Israel in recent decades, with various sectors of Israeli society accusing the Prime Minister of imposing a dictatorship.
In practice, among other aspects, the plan allowed Netanyahu, implicated in several corruption cases, as well as other politicians in power, the direct appointment of judges and control of Parliament, with a right-wing majority, over the Supreme Court.
The opposition claims that the legislation would concentrate power in the governing coalition, contrary to the principles of separation of political and judicial powers.
In the talks that began today, Netanyahu said that he “intends to reach a consensus with members of the opposition.”
However, opposition leader Yair Lapid said today that Israel was America’s greatest ally, charging that “the most radical government in Israel’s history destroyed the alliance in just three months.”
Lapid’s position was disseminated through a message on the social network Twitter.
Source: TSF
