Netanyahu must now work for support of US as Trump tires of Israel’s war in Gaza
Ilan Baruch, a former Israeli ambassador who now chairs the Policy Working Group, which advocates for a two-state solution, said,
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“Trump, it seems, has embarked on a bluntly new trajectory
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“Israel was expecting the Trump administration to stay the course within a paradigm of ‘shared convictions and mutual strategic interests’
Trump is the first president in a generation to put this equation in doubt.”
Nadav Eyal, a research scholar at Columbia University and a commentator with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, said,
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“Strong, long-term support for Israel among much of Trump’s Republican base means Netanyahu is in a better position to hold on to US support than a leader like the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy”
Eyal added,
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“As to how serious the damage is, I would say right now it is not lasting … not a full blown crisis yet”
“I suspect that both sides will try to mitigate, negotiate and not make it a public confrontation”
Still, Benjamin Netanyahu’s celebration of Israel-US ties at the start of the year, when he was the first foreign leader invited to Donal Trump’s second-term White House, now look premature
