U.S. Ambassador Warned Israel Against ‘Going Off the Rails’ With Judicial Overhaul

TEL AVIV—The Biden administration is trying to stop Israel from “going off the rails” with a rushed overhaul of its judicial system, the departing U.S. ambassador to Israel said, as the government here revives the legislation and mass protests intensify again.

President Biden and his ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, had urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to slow down and seek a consensus with the political opposition on changes to the country’s Supreme Court, with protests paralyzing the country last spring. It is unusual for a U.S. administration to weigh in on matters seen as purely domestic, but Nides said the overhaul raised questions about Israel’s democratic credentials and the U.S.-Israeli bond, which he called as close as family. 

“I think most Israelis want the United States to be in their business,” Nides said in his only interview with U.S. media before the former banker returns to the private sector. “With that sometimes comes a modicum of a price, which is articulating when we think things are going off the rails.”

“One of the messages I sent to the prime minister was to tap the brakes, slow down,” Nides said. “Try to get consensus.” 

Comments by Biden and other senior U.S. officials against the planned judicial overhaul have angered senior Israeli officials, who accused the U.S. of not understanding the judicial legislation and of unwarranted interference in internal Israeli matters. 

The overhaul consists of several bills that would generally weaken the power of Israel’s Supreme Court to overturn legislation and government decisions. In a country where the courts are the only real check on the elected government, opponents say the overhaul will facilitate authoritarian rule, while supporters say it will restore balance and rein in activist judges.

Amid mass protests in late March, Netanyahu paused the overhaul and opened talks with the opposition, but the discussions stalled. Netanyahu told The Wall Street Journal that he would move ahead with the legislation but remove and revise some controversial aspects, though his coalition partners later said he told them nothing had been fully removed. And on Monday, his government began voting on a bill that would significantly curtail the court’s power to strike down government or individual officials’ decisions on the grounds of “reasonableness.” 

The vote has reinvigorated protests and reignited calls by reservists to buck military service, a trend senior security officials warned could have national-security consequences. Protesters said they plan a “day of disruption” on Tuesday, including a demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy branch office in Tel Aviv, to keep pressure on the Biden administration to oppose the changes.

Nides declined to say what pieces of the planned overhaul particularly worry Washington. 

He said the real issue for Washington was that Netanyahu’s government is “rushing things through that ultimately could have huge implications, at least perception-wise, about what makes Israel great.” By this, he said he meant Israel’s democratic institutions, which he said U.S. officials often tout when defending Israel in international forums. 

Nides, a former Morgan Stanley banker, has been the top American diplomat in Israel over a two-year period when tensions and violence have ratcheted up significantly with Palestinians. 

The U.S.-Israel relationship has also been rocky since Netanyahu took power again at the end of last year, with the White House refusing to invite him to Washington. Biden has sometimes complicated Nides’s job with off-cuff remarks, including in a CNN interview over the weekend in which he called Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners some of “the most extreme” members in any Israeli government he has ever seen.

When Nides became President Biden’s ambassador to Israel late in 2021, he represented the first U.S. administration in nearly 50 years to not have an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. 

“I did not come here to negotiate a two-state solution. I came here to do practical things,” said Nides. 

More than two decades of U.S.-led peace talks came to a halt in 2014 under the Obama administration. Both Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

Nides said the U.S. policy is still a two-state solution. But with little appetite by either party to engage in talks, Nides said he focused instead on achieving goals that improve both the daily lives of Palestinians and as a result, the security of Israelis. 

“No, I’m not getting a Nobel Peace Prize in the next seven days,” he said. “But I do think I can look back and say that I’ve done things that have made life just a little bit easier and better for the average Palestinian.” 

Among those accomplishments he lists: extending the opening hours of the vital Allenby Bridge Crossing between the West Bank and Jordan; 4G phone service for West Bank Palestinians; $100 million in promised aid for health services for Palestinians; getting Israeli approval for Palestinians to develop a small gas field off the Gaza Strip; and working on getting a new power plant for the West Bank city of Jenin working. 

When Israel’s government dragged its feet on a direct promise to Biden to open the Allenby Crossing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Nides said he threatened to camp out on the bridge himself until the promise was fulfilled. 

“I was basically going to tie myself to the bridge and declare a hunger strike,” said Nides. After his threat, he said: “Miraculously the bridge got opened.”

Today, the bridge is open 24 hours a day, five days a week, with special weekend hours.

Nides’s approach mirrors that of the most recent Israeli governments, which have tried to limit conflict by improving Palestinian lives where possible, without promises of an independent Palestinian state in the near term. This includes initiatives such as increasing work visas for Palestinians and easing export restrictions. 

Nides said both Israelis and Palestinians are worried the Palestinian Authority could collapse because it suffers from a lack of funds and domestic legitimacy. 

“I think the important thing for the security state of Israel is to keep things calm in the West Bank,” said Nides. 

On Sunday, Israel’s cabinet voted in favor of a resolution to “prevent the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.” 

Nides said he had a close relationship with the heads of Israel’s security organizations. But he saved his highest praise for Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamist Ra’am party, who broke precedent in 2021 by becoming the first major Arab-Israeli leader to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and then broke precedent again by bringing his party into the previous coalition, the first time an independent Arab-Israeli party had done so. 

Nides described the dentist-turned-politician as “my hero” for taking great personal and political risks. 

“We need more Mansour Abbases and less other people, who shall remain nameless,” he said.

Write to Dov Lieber at [email protected] and Michael Amon at [email protected]