Trump and Netanyahu, newly empowered, to reunite; Israel risks overplaying its hand

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw his best-case scenario become a reality Tuesday night: Donald Trump won a resounding victory and will be back in the White House in January.

Hours before results started pouring in across the Atlantic, Netanyahu took a drastic step to shore up control over his own coalition. With the world focused on the US ballot, Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, replacing him with loyalist Israel Katz.

Now the prime minister seems to finally have what he wants.

He has a cabinet made up of ministers who won’t publicly stand up to him. In a few short weeks, he will be working with a White House that will keep disagreements quiet and won’t make a fuss about humanitarian matters in the war against the Iranian axis.

And after the recent campaign against Hezbollah and last month’s airstrikes on Iran, Netanyahu faces an Islamic Republic that is more vulnerable to Israeli attacks than it has been for decades.

Yet the persistent challenges Netanyahu has faced since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack remain, and Trump’s second presidency will offer new potential pitfalls for Israel’s leader.

Biden’s last hurrah

Before all that, Joe Biden still has two months left in office. He was already limping when he dropped out of the race in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, but now he is officially in his lame-duck period.

At the same time, Biden is now freed of constraints. He doesn’t have to worry about any political future, and he doesn’t have to think about the effect his statements and policies would have on Harris’s campaign.

Moreover, Biden doesn’t owe anyone anything. The Democratic establishment and Congressional leaders turned on him, and he is sure to be agitated anew by statements from anonymous Harris campaign officials blaming him for their loss.

And in the twilight of a 51-year national political career, Biden, who has always cared about international issues, doesn’t have a signature foreign policy achievement to his name.

If Iran does carry out its threat and launches a third ballistic missile attack on Israel on his watch, Biden could react differently than he has in the past. He has already reportedly warned Iran that Washington will not be able to restrain Israel if it attacks again. Might Biden order US forces to join in on the response this time, concluding that applying military force is the only way to force Tehran to stand down?

The capabilities are in place. Besides the tens of thousands of US troops permanently stationed in the Middle East, last week the Pentagon ordered several B-52 Stratofortress bomber aircraft — capable of carrying bunker-busting bombs — to the region.

Even if attacking Iran directly in the waning days of his presidency is a bridge too far for a leader whose goal since October 7 has been containing the regional conflict, it is conceivable that Iran’s supreme leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could force Biden’s hand.

“The Iranians are liable to conclude that the next two months are their last opportunity to break out and create a nuclear weapon,” said Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US.

But Biden’s personal distaste for Netanyahu could also determine what he does. He won’t be eager to do any favors for the Israeli leader, especially after the prime minister fired Gallant, who had a strong relationship with the current US administration.

If he wants to do what he can for the next Democratic leader — who almost certainly won’t be Harris — Biden could try to gain some credit with Arab-Americans by putting all his administration’s efforts into finding a way to end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. With only weeks for him to get the hostages out — something that would mean a lot to the emotive president — Biden could start backing up his demands for a deal with threats — whether to Hamas, Qatar, or even Israel, depending on which of them he sees as dragging their feet.

At the same time, any targets of such threats will know they only have to outlast Biden till January, reducing the effectiveness of US pressure.

Trump back at the wheel

As Trump’s foreign policy team takes form, Israel has an opportunity to shape the relationship for the next four years.

“It is crucial that Israel reach early understandings with the new administration as it takes office,” wrote three researchers at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, “as its focus during the early days following the inauguration will be on building and setting its policy priorities.”

There looks to be a struggle between two competing wings of the Republican party over the direction of the administration’s foreign policy. The traditional Republicans who support aid to allies and military action against terrorists and their enablers will run up against a resurgent isolationist faction that sees foreign conflicts as a waste of American resources better spent back home.

Israel and the Western-oriented Arab regimes hope that figures like senators Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton will assume the top defense and foreign policy roles, signaling a continuation of Trump’s first presidency.

“The best way to understand what he will do is to look at what he did,” said Elliot Abrams, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I don’t expect big changes in Middle East policy, which will mean more support for Israel and a tougher approach to Iran.”

“Many in the region will be readying for a return to Trump’s transactional diplomacy — a tit-for-tat, business-deal-making approach — that the regional political elite will be familiar with from the previous Trump administration,” concurred Burcu Ozcelik, RUSI’s senior research fellow for Middle East security.

“Gulf states, chiefly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, likely believe there is more to be gained under the second Trump presidency, such as US security guarantees, arms deals, and a tougher stance on Iran.”

At the same time, with JD Vance as vice president and pundit Tucker Carlson a trusted voice, there are reasons to fear that Trump will adopt a foreign policy that sees avoiding war, and not the victory of US allies, as the priority. Vance noted only last week that US and Israeli interests won’t always overlap and “our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran.”

The president-elect, in his victory speech on Wednesday, pointedly declared: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Trump already warned Netanyahu that the “killing has to stop” in Gaza. Israeli officials recognize that this could put them on a collision course with the US president-elect.

It could be advantageous to end the fighting on Israel’s terms before Trump takes office and potentially lays down his parameters for a deal.

The problem is, it’s not clear at all how to do that.

Only last week, Hamas rejected any proposal for a temporary halt to the fighting in Gaza and reiterated its insistence on a lasting ceasefire. “The idea of a temporary pause in the war, only to resume aggression later, is something we have already expressed our position on. Hamas supports a permanent end to the war, not a temporary one,” senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP.

As much as Netanyahu might like to wrap up the war and move toward a deal with Saudi Arabia — something Israeli officials tell The Times of Israel he is eager to do — the war will not end while Hamas holds hostages and insists on trying to maintain power in Gaza.

The same goes for Lebanon. Hezbollah is not going to simply throw up its hands and desist, especially as the Iran-backed organization seems to be moving toward an attrition strategy against Israel, in which time plays into its hands.

Its patrons in Tehran, meanwhile, are likely to adopt a cautious stance with Trump back in office.

“Just like the rest of the world, they want to be very careful and circumspect when it comes to Trump,” said Iran expert Ori Goldberg. “They’ve been burned by him, and they don’t want to go head-to-head with him.”

Just like the rest of the world, they want to be very careful and circumspect when it comes to Trump.

That could mean avoiding any dramatic moves on the nuclear front, while waiting for an opening for negotiations with Trump, who has shown a willingness to talk even with the most brutal dictators.

‘He doesn’t like settlements’

Israel should also be careful in its dealings with the incoming administration.

Netanyahu’s coalition includes two far-right parties that want to annex the West Bank and resettle Gaza, and Netanyahu has repeatedly indulged the demands and activities of his partners for the sake of coalition stability, including on issues as sensitive as Temple Mount prayer and humanitarian aid to Gaza.

He himself sought to extend Israeli sovereignty to all the settlements and annex the Jordan Valley in 2020, incorrectly assessing that Trump would back the move. The president, who was seeking to advance an Israeli-Palestinian “deal of the century,” did not.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir seems to think that free from Democratic pressure, Israel can now move to annex the West Bank.

“This is the time for sovereignty, this is the time for total victory,” he said in the Knesset on Wednesday.

That would be a mistake.

“In his first term, he opposed annexation,” Oren said of Trump. “He prevented Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] from moving to the annexation of Area C [of the West Bank]. He doesn’t like [Israeli West Bank] settlements.”

“With Trump, with the tremendous power behind him, with the Senate, with the Congress,” Oren observed, “when he tells us to do X, we’d better think seriously about doing X.”