Trump Keeps Distance From Netanyahu as Israeli Election Looms

Since entering the White House in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump has fulfilled nearly the entire wish list of the Israeli right and pursued a foreign policy that bolstered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political standing. For his part, the Israeli leader has always positioned himself as the best steward of Israel's most important international relationship, weathering public criticism and leaked frustrations from Trump that never translated into concrete policy changes.

Yet despite that close history, Trump has so far appeared largely indifferent to Israel's October 27 election. In that vote, Netanyahu's Likud party and the far-right alliance it leads face a growing challenge from Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot and the opposition bloc he is seeking to build.

According to Yousef Munayyer, who heads the Palestine/Israel program at the Arab Center Washington DC, this apparent indifference — at least in public — may stem from shifts in the political landscapes of both the U.S. and Israel, as well as the evolving relationship between Trump and Netanyahu.

"He seems to be keeping more distance than one might think," Munayyer told Al Jazeera, "given that Trump has previously backed right-wing allies, given the history of Trump-Netanyahu relations, and the degree of closeness between the two men."

In a recent interview with Time magazine, the U.S. president dodged three times when asked to directly express support for Netanyahu, though he still defended the Israeli prime minister's leadership in the face of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Asked about Eisenkot, Trump acknowledged: "I haven't heard anything negative about him."

Shifting support?

It bears noting that Trump's actions toward Israel, and especially toward Netanyahu, have often carried far more weight than his words. During his first term (2017-2021), Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and pushed a series of normalization agreements with Arab states designed to sidestep the Israel-Palestine issue.

In his second term, which began in January 2025, he continued transferring even the most destructive U.S. weapons to Israel amid the war in Gaza, escalated his campaign against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and, as a major highlight, waged a war with Iran that rattled the global economy.

Trump has also called for Netanyahu's pardon in an ongoing corruption trial, and has hosted the Israeli leader at least seven times since returning to the White House last year — more than any other head of state.

Throughout this relationship, signs of disagreement over Netanyahu's obstruction of Washington's efforts to achieve a more lasting peace in Gaza and to end the war with Iran have never translated into actual policy changes.

"It's a relationship that they've carefully staged for public consumption, and the few interesting details we do know are almost entirely revelations Trump chose to make," said Michael Omer-Man, director of Israel-Palestine at the Washington, DC-based think tank DAWN. He did not rule out the possibility that the U.S. could make a major move to support Netanyahu in the final stretch of the race.

"I don't think Trump has abandoned Netanyahu," Omer-Man told Al Jazeera. "But he's also a realist, and he has seen many preferred candidates in various countries lose as well as win."

In Omer-Man's assessment, the stakes for Trump may not be particularly high. Eisenkot has pledged to pursue a more moderate approach than Netanyahu, particularly in curbing settler violence in the occupied West Bank. However, those changes are mainly aimed at enhancing Israel's standing in the eyes of European governments and global publics, with little impact on the already permissive relationship with the Trump administration.

"I don't think we'll see much change in the relationship with the U.S., because there doesn't appear to be much friction in this relationship," he said. "An Eisenkot government might stop seizing hilltop after hilltop in the West Bank; they might allow more aid into Gaza, but they will not reverse any steps already taken."

"Enemies versus friends"

Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group, also pointed to the changing context surrounding the Trump-Netanyahu relationship. Trump's reticence partly reflects divisions within his own administration over the Netanyahu government, which in turn reflect broader divisions within the Republican Party as U.S. midterm elections approach.

"It could be a combination of the war with Iran and divisions within the Trump administration, with figures like Vice President JD Vance, who has spoken out strongly against Netanyahu's role in pushing the U.S. to strike Iran," Zonszein said.

Public opinion polls consistently show support for Israel remains high within the Republican Party, but has declined in recent years. Trust in Netanyahu has also eroded within the party.

At the same time, perceptions of Trump's influence have shifted in Israel, as Netanyahu's critics focus on the U.S. role in restraining Israeli operations in Lebanon, which threatened to derail the June memorandum that temporarily ended the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute published in June found that only 44 percent of Jewish Israelis believed Israel's security was a top priority for Trump, down from 61 percent in March, shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched the war with Iran.

For his part, Netanyahu has avoided using billboards touting his close relationship with Trump in this election cycle, unlike in previous years, Zonszein explained. Instead, he is featuring images of those he casts as Israel's foremost regional and international adversaries, including Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

According to Zonszein, Netanyahu is emphasizing his "enemies versus friends."