Reported by Al Jazeera
Alongside scramble to form ruling coalition, Israel’s political establishment grapples with US voter rejection of White House ally and own contribution towards it.
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”.
More from the original report
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.
“Obviously, what we have witnessed is a historic political tsunami that amounts to a total repudiation of Trumpism, so it’s certainly broader than one issue,” Shibley Telhami, of the University of Maryland and director of the Critical Issues Poll, said of the US midterm results. “But foreign policy was central, especially the Iran war and US backing of Israel, as Americans tie these to pocketbook issues,” he added.
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…