The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu garnered the unprecedented number of seats in Israel’s elections at a time when United States-Israel relations are at their lowest in decades indicates that either the Israeli electorate believes that the US-Israel rift will be confined to the Obama presidency that ends in two years, or that it simply does not care about relations with America. Either way, this is bad news for Israel.
As American commentator Peter Beinart wrote in the Israeli paper Haaretz recently, Barack Obama is “the face of 21st Century America” in which millennials and minorities that have distaste for Israel’s atrocities are becoming an influential part of the electorate. Obama, he warned, is “not an aberration; he is not a passing phase”.
On the other hand, leaders in western capitals who may have been hoping for Netanyahu’s defeat may be in for a rude awakening. Netanyahu, too, is not a passing phase in Israel. He is Israel. A third term may make him the longest serving Israeli prime minister; the Israeli people’s preferences could not be clearer.
If the Israeli electorate is not attuned to the changes taking place in America, or simply does not care about them, then the question that arises is: why does America care so much about Israel?
The abnormality of this “unshakable” relationship becomes clearer by the day — but only America refuses to acknowledge it. It violates every principle that it claims to stand for, and is a lopsided one in which a small pariah state has the power to stir internal rifts in the world’s only superpower while spitting in its leader’s face.
Netanyahu, the man who spat in Obama’s face, has come back to office significantly emboldened and considerably more radicalised. He knows that his confrontation with America has paid off, and now believes he has the people’s mandate to continue this confrontation and his war mongering ways. It remains to be seen how America will deal with Netanyahu. Unfortunately, given how timid Obama has been in facing him, it may be futile to hold much hope for change.
