Internal Israeli disagreements and Netanyahu’s poor relationship with Biden prevent normalization.

Meanwhile, in an Israel consumed with its internal problems, the country’s foreign policy seems to have adopted the old Saudi approach of following rather than leading. On Netanyahu’s top two foreign policy priorities, Israel sits on the sidelines as the United States negotiates directly with Saudi Arabia about normalization and indirectly with Iran about nuclear issues.

Netanyahu’s difficult relationship with Biden looms over all this diplomacy. The United States has continued to speak out loudly about Israeli practices in the West Bank, especially settlement activities and the importance of preserving the long-term objective of a two-state solution, however fanciful a notion this has come to seem. The aggressive drive for “judicial reform” by far-right members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition has also led to vocal pushback from the administration and large parts of the U.S. Jewish community. This growing rift with Israel has led Biden to withhold an invitation to Netanyahu to visit Washington—an extraordinary development, given the historically very close U.S.-Israeli alliance.

In response, Netanyahu has been cautious, even muting his opposition to a potential new agreement between the United States and Iran. He has emphasized that such a deal would not bind Israel but has avoided the full-throated opposition that marked his approach to the original nuclear deal negotiated by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2015. However, navigating the country’s foreign and domestic challenges will prove difficult for Netanyahu, given the composition of his rightwing coalition. Extremists within the government continue to drive the domestic agenda, leaving Netanyahu in an uncomfortable position, one in which the policies pushed by his coalition partners undermine progress toward his foreign policy objectives and complicate relations with the United States. Indeed, American officials have reportedly emphasized to their Israeli counterparts that current Israeli practices in the West Bank and Jerusalem will undermine normalization efforts with Saudi Arabia. While this tension between domestic and foreign policies is not unprecedented in Israel, never before has the government been so extreme and the far-right parties in the coalition so determined to push their agenda regardless of the external costs.