Biden picks Jack Lew as next US ambassador to Israel

Nomination comes as US attempts to broker normalisation agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia

Jack Lew is currently a managing partner at the private equity firm Lindsay Goldberg LLC and a visiting professor in international and public affairs at Columbia University in New York. AP

President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated Jack Lew as the next US ambassador to Israel. If confirmed, he would replace Tom Nides, who stepped down in July 2023.

Mr Lew, who has served in several Democratic administrations, is currently a managing partner at the private equity firm Lindsay Goldberg LLC and a visiting professor in international and public affairs at Columbia University in New York. He served as secretary of the treasury from 2013 to 2017.

He also served as Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff from 2012 to 2013. Before his work with the Obama administration, Mr Lew also served in a number of roles in the Bill Clinton administration, including as director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1998 to 2001.

Mr Lew still must be confirmed by the Senate, which has been slow to vote on diplomatic postings, as some Republican senators have been holding up the process in an effort to gain leverage on unrelated issues.

Relations between the US and Israel have been strained under Mr Biden. The current far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making a series of controversial moves, including planned judicial reforms that would strip power from Israel’s supreme court.

The US has described the reforms as undemocratic.

The Biden administration has also been actively trying to broker a normalisation agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, akin to the Abraham Accords signed between Israel, Bahrain and the UAE, which Morocco and Sudan have since joined.

It would be a major foreign policy achievement for the administration as it gears up for the 2024 election.