Trump's kiss of death: Netanjahu is now certain to lose
Donald Trump, on Sunday, nine days before Israel's October 27 parliamentary election, openly came out in support of Benjamin Netanjahu's re-election, after having avoided the question for months. On Truth Social, he assured the Israeli prime minister of his "full and unconditional" support, calling him a "great warrior prime minister" and an "even greater peace partner" in the fight against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
According to a report by Israel Hayom, he also added a sentence that could pass as a threat: if Israel chooses someone other than Netanjahu, the United States will have to handle the Iranian campaign alone, and it is not willing to do that. The same day, he told Newsmax that Israeli officials had asked for his intervention, and when asked whether he trusts Netanjahu, he answered bluntly: "I don't trust anybody." This is an important boost for the Likud leader, since Trump is popular in Israel, and Netanjahu has used his close relationship with the American president as one of his main campaign arguments. That is precisely why it was so conspicuous that the endorsement took so long to arrive.
The delay had its reasons. The two leaders jointly launched the military operation against Iran on February 28, but their paths gradually diverged, as Trump halted the American strikes and sought a diplomatic agreement with Tehran, while Netanjahu wanted to continue the fight against Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah. According to AP, they disagreed over the Israeli strike on an Iranian gas field early in the war, over the fighting against Hezbollah during the Iranian peace talks, and also over the fact that Netanjahu rejected Trump's August Gaza ceasefire plan. In June, Trump outright called his Israeli ally "crazy," and in an interview with Time he even said that he "doesn't deal with politics anymore." Netanjahu's rivals, Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, sent word to Washington through intermediaries asking Trump to stay neutral, but in the end he decided otherwise. This is not the first time he has intervened in Israel's domestic politics: last November he wrote a letter to President Isaac Herzog asking him to pardon Netanjahu, who is facing corruption charges and is still standing trial.
The Likud leader is heading into the vote in a difficult position. According to a Sunday roundup by the Jerusalem Post, based on the average of four recent opinion polls, Eisenkot's Yesh Atid... wait
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