Biden said in March that he would not invite Netanyahu to the White House because of the his government’s attempt to reform Israel’s powerful judiciary — reforms that largely parallel existing practice in the U.S.

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Sunday, Biden said that he would not invite Netanyahu until he could “work through … his existing problems in terms of his coalition,” referring to Israel’s governing parties.

Biden said that some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners were the “most extreme members of Cabinet that I’ve seen” since meeting Prime Minister Golda Meir in the early 1970s, whom he noted was not an extremist.

However, Biden met quickly with both prime ministers from the last coalition government, which included an Arab party regarded as extremist by many Israeli Jews because it denies the right of the State of Israel to exist.

Biden described himself on CNN as an “unyielding supporter of Israel” and added that some of the problems in the region were the fault of the Palestinian Authority leaders, whom he said created a “vacuum for extremism.”