TEL AVIV – U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said his main mission in the region is to “keep the waters calm.”

Another view is that Nides is tasked with preventing any major waves for President Biden’s relationship with Israel, following the Trump administration’s ripping up of decades-old conventional policies.

The ambassador, dressed casually in a white T-shirt and blue khakis, sat for an interview with The Hill in Tel Aviv. Nides, who is Jewish, wore a red string around his wrist, a marker of the Jewish practice of Kabbalah. He described himself as “not ideological” in terms of who he’ll visit with and see.

“I do a lot of stuff here … I see people, I work all week … because I’m not ideological, I’ll go anywhere. I’ll go to Bnei Brak,” Nides said, referring to an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. “I’ll go to Nazareth,” he added, referring to an Arab-Christian city. “I did an Arab business tech conference yesterday.” 

The conversation covered a wide range of issues, from the Israeli government’s reticent stance on the Russia-Ukraine war given Jerusalem’s strategic relationship with Moscow; threats from Iran and its proxies; U.S. relations with the Palestinians; and points of tension between Israel and the Biden administration

“I got one North Star, keep this a democratic, Jewish state. Anything that falls within that category I’m in, I’m in,” Nides said.

Nides arrived in Israel in November 2021, after Biden had already established that he would not seek to dramatically reverse most of former President Trump’s policies.

Biden committed to keeping the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, did not launch a new peace effort with the Palestinians and acknowledged the success of the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords — the normalization agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. 

The president further sought to steady the relationship that had soured between former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama — closely consulting with Israel over the administration’s plans to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran. Biden is also credited with helping to achieve a relatively quick cease-fire during an outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip in May 2021. 

Domestic turmoil in both countries during 2021 — multiple elections in Israel that ousted Netanyahu and the crisis surrounding the U.S. pullout of Afghanistan — largely put the U.S. and Israel relationship on auto-pilot.