US President Donald Trump and his Republican party’s resounding midterm defeat has left many in Israel, particularly on the political right, grappling with the scale of the rebuke to those seen as their closest allies in Washington. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly sought to portray himself as almost uniquely qualified to maintain the unflinching support of Trump, who returned to the White House last year promising, among others, to not start “stupid foreign wars that never end”. Yet in late February, Trump joined Netanyahu in ordering a joint military campaign against Iran, prompting immediate Iranian retaliation and raising the spectre of an all-out regional war.
With the prospect of renewed hostilities looming, both leaders exchanged effusive endorsements in the build-up to Tuesday’s US congressional election and Israel’s parliamentary vote last week, calling upon the other’s electorate to head to the polls to support their ally. The moves, however, seem to have either backfired or missed the mark dramatically. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition finished the October 27 electoral race with just 53 seats, far shy of the 61 needed to form a government.
Trump’s party, meanwhile, lost control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate to Democratic challengers who made sweeping inroads into traditionally Republican territory, including the strongholds of Texas and Kansas. The US is Israel’s staunchest diplomatic and military backer. Over the years, it has repeatedly used its United Nations Security Council veto to block dozens of resolutions critical of Israel, including several motions calling for an end to the genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
At the same time, it has been providing Israel with at least $3.8bn in military aid annually, allowing it to acquire the cutting-edge US weaponry that has granted it military superiority across the region – assistance, however, that is carrying an increasingly high political cost. Polling overseen by Telhami a week ago found that a majority of people in the US believed that Israel had influenced the Trump administration’s decision to instigate the costly and protracted war with Iran. The survey indicated that Washington’s close relationship with Tel Aviv had become more of a liability than an asset for many in the electorate, Telhami noted, “with most saying specifically Israel would be a factor in their vote.
An even larger majority said the Iran war, which they tie to Israel, would impact their vote”. While Trump acknowledged the Democrats’ midterm win, and reluctantly conceded that the war on Iran was partly to blame due to its impact on energy prices, Netanyahu has spent the days since his own electoral defeat questioning the results. Over the past week, the Likud party leader has falsely accused foreign powers of illegally boosting the vote for Israel’s Arab-led parties and cited his victory among Jewish voters as the basis for a national government.
In his most recent echo of Trump’s reaction to his own loss in the 2020 US presidential election, Netanyahu even threatened not to recognise the certification of the results. But as Israel enters a period of coalition wrangling, its political establishment also has to grapple with the routing of its White House ally and its potential culpability in it. On Wednesday, key opposition figure Yair Lapid said almost all of Netanyahu’s actions since the vote, including his call for the internal security service Shin Bet to investigate the leaders of the Arab parties, in conjunction with the US election results, had rendered the prime minister politically noxious.
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