Israel votes Donald Trump in the US presidential election. On November 3, 70% of Israelis want the victory of the current president, and barely 21% that of the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, according to a recent poll by the Mitvim Regional Foreign Policy Institute. A result diametrically opposed to the vote of American Jews, who vote 70% for Joe Biden, according to the Pew research center.
This old political abyss has deepened like never before during the tenure of Donald Trump, which represented the best American years of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, after eight years of frontal opposition to the Obama administration. Never had such a factory of influence united its advisers to those of the White House, who forged relationships of trust, even friendship.
Never before had regional priorities been aligned so closely: the confinement of Iran in a stifling sanctions apparatus; the rapprochement of Israel with the Arab monarchies of the Gulf (United Arab Emirates and Bahrain), then with their Sudanese client, on October 23; the return of the Palestinian question to limbo. “What is really unique is that when considering international relations in such individual terms, the American president does not recognize the slightest divergence between the two governments”, notes Ari Heistein, analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), in Tel Aviv.
What else could Trump offer?
If Donald Trump wins, what would he still have to offer the Jewish state? The question arises for a president who has already filled his pro-Israel evangelical Christian base, by moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, in 2018, by recognizing the country’s sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights, conquered during the 1967 war. , then the legality of settlements in the occupied West Bank, in 2019.
The US president has promised, if re-elected, to negotiate with Iran. His last attempts in this direction, in the summer of 2019, had caused concern in Tel Aviv. “If he manages to impose a better deal than Obama through his maximum pressure campaign, it will be a major gift to Israel. But we can doubt that he is capable of it “, says Ari Heistein. At the very least, Donald Trump would continue his work of undermining multilateralism, the United Nations institutions – in line with the accusations of bias brought by Israel – and against the International Criminal Court, which plans to open an investigation into crimes of alleged war in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
You have 48.42% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
