President Barack Obama is not the only senior U.S. figure who has a difficult relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also had a history of tense interactions over the course of her tenure in the administration, according to
The Washington Post.
Clinton developed a relationship with Netanyahu as far back as when she hosted him as first lady during her husband's presidency.
In the Senate, she was a reliable pro-Israel voice and as secretary of state she defended Israeli security demands.
Clinton also publicly praised Netanyahu for taking "unprecedented" steps toward peace, and she defended Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip in 2012.
But she also sharply criticized settlement policies and demanded a total freeze on settlement expansion, two positions that angered Netanyahu at the time.
At one point in 2010, Clinton led a 45-minute conference call lambasting the Israeli leader for trying to undermine American opposition to settlement-building and blaming him for embarrassing Vice President Joseph Biden during a visit.
"I learned that Bibi would fight if he felt he was being cornered, but if you connected with him as a friend, there was a chance you could get something done together," Clinton wrote in her memoir last year, according to the Post.
"Despite our policy differences, Netanyahu and I worked together as partners and friends. We argued frequently, often during phone calls that would go on for over an hour, sometimes two. But even when we disagreed, we maintained an unshakable commitment to the alliance between our countries," Clinton wrote.
Clinton has so far not waded into the debate about whether Netanyahu should be addressing Congress on Tuesday, but she is on record for strongly endorsing President Barack Obama's negotiations with Iran.
"Clinton's tough line with Netanyahu was born of a two-decades-old acquaintance built on wary respect and a shared sense that each can do business with the other," the Post said.
The Post said that even after the two exchanged harsh words, they made a point of showing no hard feelings when Clinton visited Israel. Nevertheless, the relationship is described by one observer as "bad."
"Her relationship with him is very bad, just not as toxic as Obama’s," Alon Pinkas, who was Israel's consul general in New York when Clinton was a pro-Israel senator from New York, told the Post.
"As much as it is replete with dislikes and misunderstandings, the relationship has the potential to succeed" if both politicians face one another as national leaders in 2017, Pinkas added. "I suspect it won't, because he can't help himself."
But other observers were more positive about the state of the relationship.
"They have a long relationship of mutual intellectual respect," Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., told the Post. "They both are very, very smart people, and people of very strong physical stamina."
Insiders believe that if Clinton wins the White House in 2016, she and Netanyahu would find a way to work together.
"I'd bet that under either a third Bush or a second Clinton, things might not be great between the United States and Netanyahu, but they would be better than they are right now," Wilson Center Mideast scholar Aaron David Miller wrote last week in Foreign Policy, according to the Post.
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