President Joe Biden called Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday evening, as Israeli President Isaac Herzog prepared to board a plane for Washington DC.
The Prime Minister’s Office described the conversation between the two leaders as a “warm and long conversation.”
Netanyahu’s office said the focus of the conversation was the strengthening of the strong alliance between the two countries, thwarting the threats from Iran and its proxies and expanding the circle of regional peace; and the continuation of efforts to de-escalate and stabilize the situation in Judea and Samaria (renewing the Aqaba-Sharm El-Sheikh process with the Palestinian Authority).
Netanyahu updated the US President about the “reasonableness” bill that is slated to be passed next week by the Knesset and on the prime minister’s intention to reach wide public support for the rest of the overhaul during the summer recess.
Biden invited Netanyahu to “meet soon” in the United States. The prime minister accepted the invitation and it was agreed that Israeli and US teams would coordinate the details of the meeting.
Herzog is slated to meet with Biden on Tuesday at the White House, the day before addressing a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives. The Israeli president is also scheduled to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and a host of other interagency officials.
This will be the second time in less than a year that Herzog has met with Biden, who has yet to invite Netanyahu for a visit to the White House since the start of his sixth term in office, which began more than half a year ago.
Biden is allegedly withholding the invitation over his opposition to the Israeli government’s planned judicial reforms, which have prompted months of weekly protests, riots and civil disruptions by Israeli left-wing anarchists, led by opposition leader and former prime minister MK Yair Lapid and former prime minister Ehud Barak.
