Ben Caspit, an Israeli journalist and columnist, contributed an opinion piece to AL Monitor about a month ago on the Clinton/Trump matchup. If accurate, it’s fascinating for someone like me – not living in the Middle East:
The anticipated race between Trump and Clinton is likely to place [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu in a bizarre situation: He will not have a clue which candidate to support, or which is the lesser evil. Everyone agrees that it’s an impressive matchup.
The Clintons have a tradition of animosity toward Netanyahu. Netanyahu views Clinton as a sworn enemy, worse than Obama, for a simple reason: It will be very hard for him to set Israeli public opinion against her. …
The last thing that Netanyahu wants is an American president who knows her stuff and has well-formulated opinions. Clinton is viewed as a supporter of Israel, but one that does not like Netanyahu. “We think that she won’t allow herself not to renew the diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinians,” a source close to Netanyahu told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. This is bad news for the prime minister, who has succeeded in freezing the process and totally keeping it from the international agenda, at almost no cost to himself.
Clinton was secretary of state; she managed the contacts with Netanyahu and was party to the demand to freeze Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. In retrospect, this emerged as one of the salient mistakes of the Obama administration in his first term of office. With regard to this aspect, Netanyahu has some faint hopes. “We believe that Clinton understands the enormity of the error of that [settlement construction] freeze,” said a senior diplomatic source, quoting words of another associate of Netanyahu who spoke to the premier. “Hopefully, she’ll draw the [correct] conclusions.”
The Israeli paper Haaretz reprinted an article from Jewish Insider wherein a poll indicates Israelis think Clinton would be better for Israel than Trump:
According to the poll conducted by TNS/Teleseker for Channel 1/Mabat, 42 percent of Israelis believe Netanyahu would get along much better with a President Trump, while 32 percent think the prime minister would have a better working relationship with a President Clinton. The remaining 26 percent did not know or had no opinion.
Politico has a report that also must nettle Netanyahu:
The real estate mogul does not have a coherent position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, except to break with decades of Republican orthodoxy and announce that he would be “neutral.” His GOP rivals repeated that line endlessly, hoping it would blunt Trump’s rise in the polls. It didn’t. …
All of this presents a major dilemma for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has worked for years to align Israel with the GOP. The party’s presumptive nominee is now being spurned by the same establishment figures, men like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who make up Netanyahu’s “base” in Washington. Trump has no emotional attachment to Israel. And his success has upended the long-held belief that Republican voters care deeply about a candidate’s position on Israel.
Not being a superpower must lead to different mindsets and worries than those of American citizens. More attention is paid to foreign politicians whose dyspepsia may cause chaos in your country. With Netanyahu’s GOP strategy beginning to back-fire on him (you can look at it as Trump not swearing unconditional allegiance to Israel, or the GOP losing the upcoming election), he must be looking for backup plans that will both safeguard the allegiance with the United States, and not nettle his constituents too much.
