JERUSALEM, June 22 (Reuters) – US allies of President Donald Trump defended him this week before an Israeli public concerned both with the interim agreement sealed by the US with Iran, and with criticism from the White House which, taken together, seems to indicate fissures in the decades-old alliance between Israel and Washington.
The relationship between the US and Israel has gone through ups and downs, from the initial trust they shared after the joint attack on Iran to the public disagreements between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to end the four-month-old war.
Netanyahu and many other Israelis see the risk that Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran will strengthen a state they consider their most deadly enemy and limit their ability to respond to threats from Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group, in Lebanon.
For them, the alliance with the US — long a cornerstone of Israel’s strategic approach — finds itself under pressure as opinion polls show that Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with Israel and that its strongest supporter in Washington appears to be pulling away.
“The United States and Israel have an unbreakable bond,” Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, said on Sunday, after acknowledging that there was a “tremendous level of anxiety surrounding the relationship.”
He spoke at a foreign policy conference in Jerusalem, where concerns about the state of the U.S.-Israel alliance dominated many of the discussions.
In addition to concerns regarding the text of the Iran deal, Israelis are concerned about Trump’s insistence that Israel agree to a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the way he has reacted to Netanyahu’s resistance to these agreements.
In recent weeks, Trump has called Netanyahu “completely crazy,” chided Israel that “you don’t need to demolish an apartment every time you’re looking for someone,” and publicly mulled the possibility of asking Syria to replace Israeli troops in Lebanon.
US Vice President JD Vance also adopted a more critical tone, stating that “Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is showing sympathy for the nation of Israel at this time,” adding later that not all criticism of Israel should be dismissed as anti-Semitism.
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The fact that such strong opinions come from Trump’s Republican Party is especially worrying for many Israelis, as US Democrats have already been much more critical of Israel than in previous years.
