Trump’s defeat fuels concerns in Israel over the future of its alliance with the US

After the Democrats’ overwhelming victory in the midterm elections, U.S. Republican vice president J. D. Vance wrote on social media: “The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.” He pointed to a clear cause: the war that Donald Trump launched in February with Benjamin Netanyahu, who for two decades had been trying to persuade every U.S. president to join him in overthrowing the Islamic Republic of Iran. The outcome is now clear: gasoline prices hovering around $100 a barrel (with all the impact that had on voters’ decisions), and a regime in Tehran (the same one), mocking Vance’s admission while burning images of the leaders who attacked it.Netanyahu, one of the first world leaders to congratulate Trump on his return to the White House two years ago, is now keeping a double silence: over the midterm drubbing and over the end of the billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Israel, which Trump announced on Election Day. Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, has spoken out: “I am very, very concerned. It hit me like a bolt from the blue.” “Where are our relations headed?” was the front-page headline on Thursday in Israel Hayom.In Israel, there is a sense that Netanyahu has lost two elections in the space of a week: Israel’s own parliamentary elections, which left his coalition in the minority, and the U.S. midterms, which have produced senators openly talking about genocide in Gaza and cutting off arms sales to Israel.It was no coincidence that on Tuesday, while Americans were voting, Trump announced, characteristically without much clarity, that he would end the $3.8 billion in military aid that Washington provides each year to its closest ally. Nor was it a coincidence that, on that same day, he defended the status quo with Iran, neither open conflict nor a peace agreement, in contrast to the drumbeat for war that Netanyahu had been sounding: “We seem to be getting everything we want.”Nadav Eyal, one of Israel’s leading political commentators, sees a “momentous generational shift” in relations between the two countries. “Three generations of U.S. politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, considered the alliance with Israel part of their identity,” he wrote in Yediot Aharonot. “Now a new generation is emerging in both parties that sees opposition to Israel as a component of their political identity. They are not yet a majority, but it will be very difficult to make them change their stance. No argument will convince them now. Netanyahu’s government sowed the wind and is reaping the storm.”In the wake of the U.S. election results, Yair Golan, the leader of The Democrats, the only Jewish left-wing party in opposition to Netanyahu, described the prime minister as “toxic, both among Democrats and Republicans.”In his social media post on Wednesday, J. D. Vance cited one of the “smartest” people he knows in politics, a pollster, and pointed to the “changing our relationship with Israel” as one of four factors behind the shift of Republican voters toward the Democrats.Several developments suggest which way the wind is blowing. All have occurred within the past 48 hours, during which Gadi Eisenkot, the leading opposition contender in Israel, has secured more backing than expected ahead of receiving the mandate on Friday to form a government.In addition to the four parties that make up the Jewish opposition bloc, both Arab electoral alliances have endorsed his nomination, giving him the equivalent of 67 seats in the 120-member parliament. By contrast, one of Netanyahu’s current coalition partners, the ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism, has abstained, the first time it has done so in two decades.One sign of the changing mood came in an interview in which Danny Danon, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, appeared to recast the narrative surrounding the joint operation against Iran. “I think it is unfortunate that [...] many have linked the rise in prices, mainly oil, to the situation here in Israel. We know the decision to attack Iran was the United States’. It was not ours.”In reality, Netanyahu had presented the operation at the White House days earlier as a likely success: the destruction of Iran’s ballistic missile program within weeks, mass protests in the streets, and a regime too weakened to close the Strait of Hormuz or strike U.S. interests in neighboring countries, according to The New York Times’ reconstruction of the meeting. Despite the skepticism of some of his advisers, Trump gave the operation the green light. The rest is history: none of those expectations came to pass.Message to TrumpEisenkot has also issued a message in response to Trump’s defeat. Written in both English and Hebrew, it seeks to wrest from Netanyahu the image of being the only Israeli leader capable of nurturing ties with the White House through his friendship with Trump, stronger in the past than it is today, as well as through his command of English and deep familiarity with the United States, where he lived for 15 years over different periods.Eisenkot said that, if he leads Israel’s next government, he will “renew and deepen” the alliance with Washington and “strengthen the bipartisan foundations that have long sustained it.” “I look forward to working closely and constructively with President Trump and his administration, whose friendship and commitment to Israel we deeply value,” he added.If Eisenkot succeeds Netanyahu, he will not suddenly find himself cut off from the flow of U.S. military support. Because the bilateral agreement allows Israel to acquire equipment through future payment commitments, the country has already placed military orders worth billions of dollars covering the final two years of the current arrangement, making it all but impossible to turn off the tap overnight.According to a U.S. State Department document cited Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, Israel will need approximately $10 billion after 2028 to cover outstanding orders that were pending as of April 1.Amir Tibon, a former U.S. correspondent for the newspaper Haaretz, has urged caution against the alarmist tone adopted by parts of the Israeli press, which has focused on the lawmakers most critical of Israel. Congress, he argues, will not fall into their hands. Moreover, the incoming speaker of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, voted in July against cutting military aid to Israel after decades of support for the country and multiple visits there. The same is true of Josh Shapiro, who was reelected governor of Pennsylvania, the most important battleground state, by a margin of 22 percentage points. Shapiro has criticized Netanyahu while continuing to support the Jewish state.For that reason, Tibon argues, Israel’s next government will still find partners within Democratic ranks “if it acts wisely,” something he believes is incompatible with “another term under Netanyahu,” who, in his view, has “burned every possible bridge with moderate Democrats.” The problem, however, goes far beyond Netanyahu himself, Tibon and other commentators argue, pushing back against the politically convenient interpretations offered by some opposition leaders. Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran specialist and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, summed it up on X: “While it is true that Netanyahu has contributed significantly to the deterioration of Israel’s position in the United States, the problem is much deeper than him.” Citrinowicz has a warning for opposition politicians: if they hope to restore bipartisan support from Israel’s most important ally and win back younger Americans, they will need to change more than just the faces in power. Israel’s policies toward the Middle East, and toward the Palestinians in particular, will also have to change.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition