WASHINGTON - U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides on Tuesday said that he doesn't believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will unilaterally push through his contentious judicial overhaul, warning the public reaction would be dramatic.
"I do not believe we're gonna wake up and they're gonna do all this legislation unilaterally. I do not believe that will happen. I don't believe the prime minister wants this. This was never, in my humble view, the Prime Minister's major objective becoming a prime minister," Nides told a Zoom event hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
"His coalition partners have a different objective, but I think he himself wants to do big things. He wants to focus on Iran, he wants to focus on normalizing with Saudi Arabia. So my hope is they will not do everything unilaterally. Because I think the reaction here would be quite dramatic," he added.
Nides further addressed the potential Israel-Saudi normalization, acknowledging "it's very complicated" and "not that simple under any circumstances." He noted, however, that U.S. President Joe Biden is "willing to expend the political capital and try to see if there's an opportunity to get this done."
The remarks from Nides, who said he hopes Israel comes "to some reasonable conclusion" on the matter, come after recent polling revealed 61 percent of Jewish-American voters aware of the planned judicial overhaul believe it will weaken Israel's democracy.
Biden himself had previously and explicitly called on Netanyahu to "walk away" from the plan in favor of pursuing a broad consensus, reflecting the plan's deep unpopularity with U.S. lawmakers and the vast majority of the U.S. Jewish community.
Nides' comments come after months-long negotiations under the auspices of President Isaac Herzog collapsed in recent weeks, lending much uncertainty to the next stages of the overhaul.