Netanyahu favours Trump, but he could come to regret it

The average Israeli probably prefers Trump partly because Harris is an unknown. Little or none of the appreciation they feel for Biden's enormous help over the course of the war in Gaza has been passed on to his vice president.

But Trump's popularity is mostly due to his first term in office, when he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal and orchestrated the Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and a clutch of Arab countries. The fact that Trump also proposed a peace plan that called for a Palestinian state and that he scotched Netanyahu's plans to annex part of the West Bank seems to have been forgotten.

Israelis tend to see the positive gestures as a demonstration of Trump's love for Israel. But the record doesn't quite bear that out. Trump only made one visit to Israel during his term as president. By contrast, Biden has travelled to Israel twice, including in the early days of the war in Gaza, in a powerful and personal show of support days after the October 7, 2023, attack. Early in his 2016 campaign, Trump got his pro-Israel talking points wrong and told a CNN interviewer that, in regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict, he "would love to be neutral if it's possible." He corrected himself quickly after he recognised the gaffe, but it is safe to assume it reflected a strong personal impulse.

In his current campaign, Trump has offered a mixed and often nebulous mélange of stances on Israel in regards to the most pressing issues it faces, namely Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran.

In the first few months of the Israel-Hamas war, Trump spoke about the need to "finish up your war"  and "get it done quickly." In the September debate with Harris, he said, "I will get that settled and fast." More recently, he has moved a little more in the direction of supporting the war effort, telling Netanyahu in a phone call, "Do what you have to do." But Trump has never spoken of the "total victory," which Netanyahu says is Israel's goal.

Trump advisors have been quoted as saying it is quite possible Trump would follow Biden's approach by pressuring Israel to agree to a ceasefire and hostage deal. And, since Trump appears keen on crowning his Abraham Accords achievement with a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu might find himself under pressure from a Trump administration to meet Saudi demands for progress toward Palestinian statehood.

On Iran, Trump has taken a tough line publicly, but not as tough as Netanyahu would like. Trump has spoken of stepping up his campaign of "maximum pressure" on Tehran, but by that, he means more onerous economic sanctions, not a war. "Overall, he has a huge aversion to war," one advisor recently told the Financial Times.

And that speaks to Trump's larger worldview, which doesn't align well with Israeli interests. Trump is suspicious of allies, especially those who don't pay their own way in terms of defence. He most certainly doesn't like multilateralism. In all these areas, Israel would be vulnerable in a Trump administration.

In the past, Israel might have been regarded as the kind of ally Trump appreciates. Yes, it was the recipient of billions of dollars in US aid and was hardly paying its way, but at least Israel never asked for American troops to defend it. And its powerful and effective military often served US interests.

The war with Hamas and the parallel conflicts with Hezbollah and Iran have changed that dynamic. The United States has spent at least $22.7bn on direct military aid to Israel and related US operations in the region as of 30 September, according to a study by Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Since then, the price tag has grown as Washington extended more assistance amid tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Iran.

Beyond the money, the United States has, at various times, dispatched additional aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and troops to the region. Earlier this month, it sent a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) ballistic missile defence system to Israel and 100 personnel to operate it to close gaps in Israel's air defences. The United States has also been supplying massive quantities of arms to Israel that could never be sourced from any other country or produced at home. To the credit of multilateralism, Biden twice organised a coalition of Western and Arab powers to aid Israel when Iran launched missile attacks.

The fighting will eventually come to an end, but Israel's reliance on the United States is likely to remain elevated for the foreseeable future. Israeli planners are assuming it will have to increase defence spending considerably in the years ahead, costs that it might struggle to cover, especially if economic growth slows.

Trump's defenders will counter that Israel is a special case. Unlike other allies, it has a homegrown constituency in the United States among evangelical Christians and many Jews. In the Republican Party, support for Israel is a sine qua non. But will that be enough?

Trump will never have to face voters again if he wins next week and can do as he chooses. He and Netanyahu might have made up for now because they need each other politically, but Trump isn't the forgiving type and doesn't take defiance lightly. If the two clash on Iran, Palestinian policy, or the terms for Saudi normalisation, the friendship could easily fall apart.

Trump's foreign-policy team is likely to contain a large number of "America first" supporters who might like Israel but are loath to entangle the United States in the Middle East's forever wars, even when Israel is a party. Those among his advisors who advocate a more activist US foreign policy are focused on China. Like the Biden administration, they see Iran as secondary and don't want to commit resources to the threat.

Netanyahu is presumably more calculating and pragmatic than the ordinary Israelis whose support for Trump is visceral. The prime minister might be reasoning that he can't afford to alienate Trump and that if Harris wins she'll behave like Biden and continue supporting Israel despite any bad blood.

No matter who wins, the next four years of Israel-US relations are likely to be rockier than those of the Biden presidency. Biden was a true friend of Israel and was prepared to go a long way to help it in a crisis at a great political cost. The White House's next occupant—whether Trump or Harris—is unlikely to do the same.