The blame game: How America’s midterm clash is shaping Israel’s prime ministerial race | Israel Elections 2026 News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long presented himself as the leader who will ensure that ties with the United States, the country’s most important ally, remain strong. The support he received from US President Donald Trump in the run-up to last month’s Israeli parliamentary elections reinforced this perception, the same year that Washington and Tel Aviv jointly went to war against Iran.

Then came the midterm elections in the United States and the disastrous performance of Trump’s Republican Party. Early analyzes of why Republicans lost so badly focused in part on the war with Iran and the U.S.-Israel relationship. Both were highlighted by US Vice President JD Vance.

Suddenly, Netanyahu’s argument that he is the secret sauce of the U.S.-Israeli relationship seems much weaker. Rather, it can be argued that Netanyahu and his policies – which resulted in a genocidal war in Gaza, the war in Iran, and numerous attacks in the wider region – have made Israel politically toxic to the United States.

Many Israelis now fear that the country can no longer count on the undisputed support of the United States. And as Israeli political leaders attempt to form a government after the parliamentary elections, the opposition has placed the blame squarely on Netanyahu and argued that this is another reason why he should not be allowed to form the next government.

Yair Lapid, a former Israeli prime minister whose party is a member of the bloc seeking to oust Netanyahu, highlighted his own ties to members of the US Congress in a social media post. He added that he believed American voters were not so much against Israel as “against extremist ministers who say crazy things. They are against settler violence; they are against a government they don’t understand; they are mainly against Netanyahu – for them, everything related to him is toxic.”

Avigdor Lieberman, another opposition leader, echoed what many in Israel suspect: that Trump’s election day announcement that U.S. military aid to Israel would end had been exchanged for his support for the prime minister. “The price of Trump’s support for Netanyahu – $3.8 billion per year,” Lieberman wrote on social media.

“As America stops the money it has been funneling to Israel for so many years, the defense budget, which is already 7 percent of GDP, will have to increase. Israelis will feel it in their pockets. But you can’t be a rogue state and expect things to continue as before,” said Ahron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior professor at King’s College London. “In Israel, Netanyahu continues to do what he has always done so well, turning one part of the population against another. He is now trying to delegitimize the Arabs by saying they stole the elections, in order to prevent the opposition from having the Arabs as partners.”

No substantial change

Israel’s October 27 general election left Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc with 53 seats in parliament, eight short of the 61 needed to form a government.

The opposition bloc led by former army chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot won 48 seats, while the Arab parties – the United Arab List (Raam) and the United Arab List – had 19 seats. The Arab parties have both said they would support Eisenkot as prime minister.

Eisenkot and other opposition leaders have rejected suggestions of a unity government with Netanyahu, leaving him without a clear path to a majority.

It is now up to Israeli President Isaac Herzog to appoint a politician to form a government, but he has not yet done so.

As things stand, Eisenkot’s so-called Zionist bloc, which had previously ruled out serving alongside Arab parties, stands to benefit from their support from outside the government, despite Netanyahu’s attacks.

Eisenkot’s prospects were further strengthened Thursday when United Torah Judaism (UTJ), Netanyahu’s longtime ultra-Orthodox ally, declined for the first time since 2009 to recommend him or anyone else to form a government, an apparent defection that weakens the prime minister’s position while giving a boost to his opponents.

But Eisenkot replacing Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister does not necessarily mean he will be able to reverse the decline in Israel’s popularity in the United States. An April Pew Research Center poll suggested that public attitudes in the United States are as negative toward Israel as they are toward Netanyahu, noted pollster Shibley Telhami, director of the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll.

“Our own poll found that most Americans would not change their view of Israel, even if there was a new government without Netanyahu,” Telhami said. “Any Israeli government would be swimming against the rising tide of the public…I don’t think an Israeli government can return relations to where they were five years ago. »