‘Yesssss!’: Israel reacts to Donald Trump’s return to power in US election
Even before the US presidential election polls had closed on Tuesday night, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had taken to Twitter, posting “Yesssss” in English, while adding emojis of a flexing bicep and images of the Israeli and American flags.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was only slightly slower in congratulating former US President Donald Trump on his triumph in the US presidential election, becoming the first world leader to do so and framing Trump’s victory as a “powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America”.
Two days before this week’s election, which saw Trump stage one of the wildest political comebacks in recent history, leading the Republican Party to a landslide victory, polls in Israeli media showed Trump had already won the hearts and minds of many in Israel.
Asked who they would like to see in the White House, almost 65 percent of respondents said they preferred Trump over his rival, Kamala Harris. Among those who identified themselves as Jewish, the difference was even more marked, with 72 percent of those polled telling the Israel Democracy Institute they felt Israel’s interests would be better served by a Trump presidency.
This is a further lurch towards the Republicans. A similar poll conducted by the same body in 2020 showed that 63 percent of Israelis favoured Trump over the eventual victor, Joe Biden.
A ‘watershed moment’
“People are celebrating now,” pollster and former political aide to, among others, Netanyahu, Mitchell Barak told Al Jazeera from Jerusalem. “I mean, you’ve seen the polls, people see this as a win for Israel, and for Netanyahu. He [Netanyahu] gambled on this, reckoning that he just had to hold on till November and a Trump victory, and that gamble turned out to be right.
“Within Israel, people see this as being a watershed moment,” he said.
In the build-up to the 2020 election, Trump had told US voters in a bid to win the Jewish vote that “the Jewish state has never had a better friend in the White House than your president, Donald J Trump”.
In this, unlike many of the former US president’s statements, he appeared factually correct.
In his first term as president, Trump defied international norms and recognised the occupied Golan Heights – Syrian territory, two-thirds of which is occupied by Israel – as Israeli territory, accepted Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, subsequently moving the US embassy and installed its pro-settler ambassador there.
Consolidating Israel’s position within the region, the US president also embarked on what he termed the Abraham Accords, leading to the normalisation of relations between Israel and four Arab states; Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan, in return for US concessions and, in many cases, access to Israel’s cutting edge intelligence and weapons technology.
More recently, Trump emphasised his wish to re-establish the warm relationship he enjoyed with Netanyahu during his first presidency in July this year when he welcomed the Israeli prime minister to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
In contrast, the Biden administration’s relations with Netanyahu, while strong, have cooled through the course of 13 months of war on Gaza.
First, there were the repeated US “concerns” over the Israeli campaign on Gaza that has so far killed 43,391 people – mostly women and children – and with many thousands more lost and presumed dead under the rubble. Then there were Biden’s red lines on Israel’s subsequent invasion of Rafah. And finally, the US government’s recent requests that aid be allowed into northern Gaza, which aid agencies have said sits upon the brink of famine. All this appears to have jarred with the Israeli prime minister who, in March this year, went so far as to say that US President Biden – whose unflinching military and diplomatic support has underpinned Israel’s war on Gaza – was “wrong” in his criticism of Israel.
Given the pressure that Netanyahu faces both at home – from people who want a Gaza ceasefire deal to be done to secure some chance of retrieving the remaining Israeli captives there – and abroad, where many countries are appalled by the levels of violence seen in Gaza – Netanyahu needs an American ally that is uncritical, analysts have said.
