Netanyahu-Trump alliance in shreds
DONALD TRUMP’S abrupt decision last week to withdraw US troops from north Syria is, for now at least, the low point in the love affair between the US president and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Not only was he not informed about the content of the fateful phone call between Mr Trump and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan before it was reported in the media, but Mr Netanyahu had built a large part of his political survival plans on the President.
A month ago, after it transpired that his right-wing-religious coalition had failed to win a majority in the September 17 election, Mr Netanyahu in his initial statements kept referring to a “great opportunity” that was opening up to Israel with Mr Trump’s plan for the Middle East.
Along with the ever-increasing threat from Iran, this was supposed to justify the necessity of his remaining prime minister at the head of a national-unity government.
In recent weeks, however, Mr Netanyahu has stopped name-checking Mr Trump in his public speeches. He still believes he needs to remain prime minister and the Iranian threat continues to increase but there seem to be no opportunities right now for him from Washington. Yet the signs were there already before the Trump-Erdogan conversation.
Last month, for the first time in a decade, Mr Netanyahu skipped the UN General Assembly and its obligatory presidential meeting. Mr Trump pointedly remarked at one stage, “our relationship is with Israel” — not its prime minister.
Last Thursday, at the annual memorial service for soldiers killed in the Yom Kippur War, Mr Netanyahu said that in 1973, the emergency military supplies from the US arrived “only towards the end.” He stressed that “we appreciate America’s help and the economic pressure they are putting on Iran. But with that, we remember and practise the basic rule that Israel will defend herself, with her own strength, against any threat.”
“It was dangerous to rely on the relationship with Trump to begin with,” says a senior Israeli diplomat of the latest development. “It was clear that it wouldn’t end well and we’re lucky in some ways that we had two-and-a-half years before things went wrong for us.”
Israel’s concern over the reduced American presence in Syria related both to abandonment of the Kurdish population and to the assessment that it will help Iran further entrench itself across Israel’s northern border. In the last week, protests were held outside the American and Turkish embassies in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Reserve officers in the IDF signed a petition to Mr Netanyahu and Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi demanding that
Israel “not stand by” while the Kurds are being killed by Turkish troops.
In a rare statement which seemed to contradict American policy, Mr Netanyahu tweeted that “Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies.”
For now, Israeli defence chiefs are focused on the fate of the last main US base in Syria, Al Thanf, close to the border triangle with Jordan and Iraq. This is major strategic point controls the main land corridor of “the Shia Crescent” leading all the way from Tehran to Beirut.
Another concern for Mr Netanyahu is what to do with the campaign posters from the two elections in 2019, many still up, showing him and Mr Trump shaking hands, over the slogan “Netanyahu — in a different league.”