US-Israel ties will persist, even if Biden-Netanyahu relationship doesn't

Hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas are now at an advanced stage, with Hamas continuing to push for a full and immediate ceasefire. But press reports abound about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hesitation to accept a deal.

As the US continues to become ever more mired in the regional tensions resulting from Israel's war on Gaza, many wonder if the decades-long relationship between US President Joe Biden and Netanyahu will be strong enough to push through an agreement.

But while the relationship indeed goes back to a time when both politicians were starting to rise in their careers, it has not always been a positive one. And in the last several months, tensions between Biden and Netanyahu have reached levels of acrimony previously unseen.

For example, after a frustrating phone call in December where Biden attempted in vain to convince Netanyahu to release tax revenues that Israel was withholding to the Palestinian Authority, Biden reportedly abruptly ended the call and did not talk to Netanyahu for weeks.

However, tensions between the two leaders are far from new. In 2010, when then-Vice President Biden went to Israel to restart peace talks between Netanyahu’s government and the Palestinian Authority, he was met with Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem.

The move infuriated Biden at the time and scuttled any hopes for progress in the talks. More recently, in early 2023, Netanyahu moved to weaken Israel’s judiciary system in what many believed was an attempt to keep himself out of jail.

Biden publicly admonished the move, distancing himself from the prime minister and refusing to extend him an invitation to the White House for months. Instead, Biden met Netanyahu for the first time in his presidency on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Those who know both men describe their relationship as one not based on mutual admiration, but rather mutual respect. Both have spent decades in public service and Biden shares Netanyahu’s dedication to the State of Israel - although Netanyahu is often accused of putting his own political interests above those of the country he serves.

It is that dedication to Israel, which Biden speaks of often as stemming from a meeting he had in 1973 as a first-year senator with then PM Golda Meir, which drives the president to stand by the nation - even when his patience with Netanyahu runs out, time and again.

Combined with historical bi-partisan support in the US for Israel, any US president is compelled to provide unwavering support, regardless of who sits in the prime minister’s office.

Comparing his acrimonious relationship with former president Barack Obama to the warm ties he had with former president Donald Trump, it is not hard to understand Netanyahu’s preference for a Republican administration.

Whereas Obama prioritised a nuclear deal with Iran over Netanyahu’s vehement objections, Trump gave Netanyahu a US Embassy in Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords, and formally recognised the annexation of the Golan Heights, with little to no concessions on the Israeli PM's part.

It matters not to Netanyahu that President Biden has stood by Israel and defended its actions in Gaza in the face of immense international public outrage, a historical International Court of Justice ruling that Israel may plausibly be committing genocide in Gaza, and even the resulting plummet in Biden’s approval ratings at home—a development that could very well lead to his defeat in November.

Biden’s support comes with thorns on Netanyahu’s side: leaked stories of Biden’s frustration with the Israeli leader, tough conversations behind the scenes and, worst of all to Netanyahu, Biden’s insistence on Israel’s commitment to a Palestinian state as a condition to re-opening normalisation talks with Saudi Arabia.

A second Trump presidency, on the other hand, would give Netanyahu carte blanche to continue his policies and objectives. These include preventing the emergence of a Palestinian state, tolerating extremist settler violence in the West Bank in addition to further settlement development, and granting free reign to extremist elements of Israeli society and their representatives in government.

For his part, Trump has said that he would deport pro-Palestinian students from the United States and would most likely require minimal lip service from Israel towards a Palestinian state to attain Saudi-Israel normalisation, a crown jewel in any US president’s foreign policy legacy.

Much can happen between now and the US presidential elections in November that will affect US-Israel relations moving forward, regardless of who is at the helm.

Should the US continue to get sucked into regional escalations, perhaps with more US lives lost, calls within Congress and swaths of the American public to re-evaluate the unconditionality of US support to Israel will likely grow louder.

One thing is certain: Netanyahu’s political future is grim. The majority of Israelis dislike him, with thousands of them taking to the streets in recent weeks to demand an election.

The war in Gaza will one day come to an end and Netanyahu will have to face a reckoning over the intelligence and political failures that allowed Hamas to inflict such horrific damage on October 7. On that day, Netanyahu may find that while the US relationship with Israel is special, he certainly is not.