White House press secretary Josh Earnest scolded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his staff on Tuesday for telling the press first that he was cancelling a March 18 meeting with President Obama, instead of telling the White House first.
Earnest said it’s “just good manners” to let the White House know directly, a comment that again reveals the rocky relationship between Obama and Netanyahu.
“We would have preferred to have heard about that in person rather than reading it in media reports,” Earnest told reporters during his daily briefing.
Earnest repeatedly stressed that the White House reaction of surprise to the “scheduling challenges” about this particular meeting wouldn’t have a “much of a tangible impact” on the strong relationship between the two countries. He noted that Vice President Biden would meet with Netanyahu Wednesday during a visit to Israel.
“We have encountered questions about our relationship in the past,” Earnest acknowledged. “We have gone to great lengths to demonstrate that our commitment [to Israel’s security] is unshakeable.”
There are plenty of ways the Obama administration is demonstrating that commitment, he said, including continued unprecedented support for Israel’s Iron Dome program and ongoing negotiations on renewing a Memorandum of Understanding on the United States’ security support.
Earnest also didn’t rule out another meeting between Obama and Netanyahu before the president leaves office in January of next year.
But it’s clear that the White House is angry about Netanyahu’s abrupt decision to cancel a visit to Washington later this month, and about how they learned about it through the media.
The White House disputed reports in the Israeli media that said Netanyahu canceled the trip because he couldn’t find a date for a meeting that worked with Obama’s schedule.
Netanyahu was expected to travel to Washington for a visit coinciding with the annual summit of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest pro-Israel group in the United States.
“They initially sought a meeting on or around the 17th or 18th of March, we confirmed for him that March 18 would work for President Obama,” Earnest said. “We learned through media reports yesterday that that date would not work for them.”
