The frost remains between JD Vance And Benjamin Netanyahu. On Monday, the US vice president is de facto refused to give his endorsement to the Israeli prime minister just a few days before the elections for the renewal of the Knesset. «I support American candidates, and that’s what I’m focusing on in the midterm elections. So I will not meddle in the Israeli elections,” he said. «I’m not supporting it either against or for. I do not intend to meddle in the Israeli elections,” he added, referring to Netanyahu.
The words of the American vice president are significant, especially in light of the fact that, again on Monday, Donald Trump had given his endorsement to the Israeli prime minister. Not only that. It was last April, when the number two in the White House took part in an electoral event Viktor Orban shortly before the Hungarian elections. All this to say that the refusal of the endorsement a Netanyahu exemplifies, once again, the increasingly difficult relationship between the Israeli leader and the US vice president.
Furthermore, it is no mystery that, within the current American administration, Vance is one of the coldest figures towards the government of Jerusalem. It was last June, when the vice president defended the US deal with Iran against criticism from Netanyahu. «Donald J. Trump he is the only head of state in the world who currently has sympathy for the nation of Israel. If I were in the Israeli government, I probably wouldn’t attack the only powerful ally I have left in the world,” he declared. The following month, Vance He also accused Israel of orchestrating a campaign aimed at derailing diplomacy between Washington and Tehran. “There’s a real foreign influence campaign going on, funded to derail the very deal I was trying to make,” he said.
Not only that. In September, while not hiding disagreements with him, the vice president publicly refused to break off his friendship with Tucker Carlson: the journalist who, once a supporter of Trumpthen broke with him over the war in Iran and who has become a harsh critic of the Jewish state for months. After all, second Politicalthe hostile positions towards the Israeli government expressed by Vance they would be worrying some of the Republican Party’s financiers. For his part, the vice president, in view of a possible candidacy for the nominations Republican presidential election in 2028, aims to intercept not only the vote of disappointed Trumpists but also of those segments of the American electorate who do not like Netanyahu (both on the right and on the left).
To act as a counterbalance to the positions of Vancein the Washington administration, are instead the head of the Pentagon Pete Hegseth (who is a staunch ally of the current Israeli prime minister) and the secretary of state Marco Rubio (who, historically a supporter of the Jewish State, is however keeping rather aloof on the “issue Netanyahu»). Finally it emerges in the center Trump who, despite having guaranteed him endorsement, has had a rather fluctuating (and at times stormy) relationship with the Israeli prime minister over the last year and a half. In short, the topic is complex. And it will probably prove very relevant during the next Republican presidential primaries.
