Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. File photo: Pool via Reuters.

Palestinian students walk around an Israeli Army gate as they make their way to school on the first day of the school year, at the entrance to the occupied West Bank village of Qusra on Sunday (September 6, 2026).
| Photo Credit: AP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. File
| Photo Credit: AP

American allies of President Donald Trump this week defended him to an Israeli public anxious about a U.S. interim deal with Iran and White House criticism that together ‌appeared to signal fissures in Israel’s decades-old alliance with Washington.

West Asia war LIVE updates on June 23, 2026

The U.S.-Israeli relationship has been on a roller coaster, from the ​early confidence they shared after their joint attack on Iran to public disagreements between Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how ⁠to end the four-month-old war.

Mr. Netanyahu and many other Israelis see a risk that Mr. Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran will empower a state they regard as their deadliest enemy and constrict their ability to respond to threats from Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

They sense the U.S. alliance — long the bedrock of Israel’s strategic approach — is under strain as ‌opinion polls show Americans increasingly unhappy with Israel and their strongest champion in Washington appears to be turning away.

“The United States and Israel have an unbreakable bond,” Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said on Sunday (June 21, 2026) after acknowledging there was an “enormous level of anxiety about ‌the relationship.”

He spoke at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem, where concerns about the state of the U.S.-Israel alliance dominated many of ‌the ⁠discussions.

Mark Levin, a conservative Fox News commentator and longtime Mr. Trump supporter who has broken with the President over the Iran deal, told ⁠the audience that while he did not like the agreement and believed that the “Iranian regime” had to be destroyed, he nevertheless praised Mr. Trump for what he said was the president’s support for liberty, religious freedom, Christianity and Judaism.

Israelis worry over criticism from Republicans

Alongside their concerns about the wording of the Iran deal, Israelis worry about Mr. Trump’s insistence on Israel agreeing to a ceasefire with Hezbollah ​in Lebanon and his language responding to Mr. Netanyahu’s resistance to those ‌agreements.

In recent weeks Mr. Trump has called Mr. Netanyahu “fucking crazy,” lectured Israel that “you don’t have to knock an apartment down every time you’re looking for somebody” and publicly pondered asking Syria to replace Israeli troops in Lebanon.

Vice President J.D. Vance also struck a more critical tone, saying “Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” adding later that not all ‌criticism of Israel should be dismissed as antisemitism.

The fact that such sharp views are emanating from Mr. Trump’s Republican Party is especially worrying for many ​Israelis, with U.S. Democrats far more vocally critical of Israel than in previous years.

Sid Rosenberg, a prominent conservative New York radio host, told Israelis that for all their concerns about Mr. Trump, he was the best option for them. “You could have J.D. Vance. ⁠Good luck with that,” he said, after acknowledging that “a lot of people in Israel are very, very upset” with the president.

While large majorities of Republicans 50 and older view Israel positively, younger conservative Americans have grown more critical, a Pew Research Center poll from late March showed. Some 57% of Republicans aged 18-49 have ‌an unfavourable opinion of Israel, up from 50% a year previously.

Many Americans, including prominent Democratic politicians, were outraged by the scale of death and devastation in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza after the deadly Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, on Israeli communities and the taking of hostages.

Israel has also faced criticism over the joint decision to launch the war on Iran, a conflict that is deeply unpopular in the United States, including among Mr. Trump’s conservative base.

Victoria Coates, vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank and Mr. Trump’s deputy national security adviser during his first term, suggested on Monday (June 22, 2026) that the U.S.-Israeli relationship was strained but expressed confidence that the leaders of both countries would bring it “back on track”.

A day earlier, speaking at the conference, she had said that recent days had been “challenging ‌for all of us, to put it mildly,” but that there had been plenty of “great and good things” in Mr. Trump’s second term “for which we can and should be grateful.”

Netanyahu not concerned by Trump comments, officials day

Until recently, Mr. Trump had been seen in Israel as its strongest-ever White House ally after his decision in his first term to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights and his leading diplomatic ⁠role securing the release of hostages last year.

Two Israeli officials familiar with Mr. Netanyahu’s thinking said the Prime Minister was not concerned that comments by Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance ⁠indicated any meaningful U.S. policy changes such as slower arms deliveries.

Mr. Netanyahu believed the comments might be partly geared towards assuaging voters ahead of U.S. midterm elections in November amid growing frustration over Israel and the war, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The anxiety ‌in Israel has led some prominent figures to say it is time for the country to envisage a future without strong U.S. support and to further build up its own military and technological capabilities.

Ohad Tal, chair of the U.S.-Israel caucus in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, said Israelis needed to ​prepare for the day when there is a less supportive U.S. President “and this is why we have to be much more independent and we have to forge new alliances.”

Published – June 23, 2026 12:33 pm IST

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

In his long political career that started in the early 1990s, Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu was written off several times. And every time, he made a stronger comeback. In 1996, he became Israel’s youngest Prime Minister, and the first to be born in the state of Israel. After losing the 1999 election heavily to Labour’s Ehud Barak, Mr. Netanyahu would go for a brief retirement, but would return to power in 2009. His hold over Israeli politics would be challenged again in 2019 after the fall of his government. In back-to-back elections, Mr. Netanyahu failed to form a stable coalition and three corruption cases cast shadows over his career. In 2021, his rivals from across Israel’s political spectrum joined hands to form a coalition with the main goal of keeping Bibi out of power.

But after 17 months in opposition, Mr. Netanyahu made another stunning comeback this week, with his right-religious coalition securing a comfortable majority in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. The era of Mr. Netanyahu, ‘King Bibi’ for his loyal supporters, is a present continuous one.

Netanyahu to run for re-elevction, his party says, after Trump raises doubts

Born in 1949 in Tel Aviv, a year after the state of Israel was formed, he grew up in Israel and the U.S. He enlisted in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in 1967, the year of the June War in which Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, Gaza Strip and Sinai from Egypt and Golan Heights from Syria — all in six days. Mr. Netanyahu would become a combat soldier and a team leader at an elite special forces unit of the IDF, Sayeret Matkal, “a unit that changed the reality of our lives,” as he later recalled. When Sayeret Matkal was deployed in 1976 to Entebbe, Uganda, to rescue hostages held at the city’s Airport, Mr. Netanyahu’s older brother Yonatan was the commander of the unit. Militants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations had hijacked an Air France plane with 248 passengers and made it land in Uganda, which was then ruled by the dictator Idi Amin. The Sayeret Matkal’s mission was successful as most of the hostages were rescued, but Yonatan was killed in action — the IDF’s only fatality. The loss of his brother, according to Mr. Netanyahu, has shaped his views on “terrorism”, which he called a form of totalitarianism.

Arguably the most influential politician in Israel today, Mr. Netanyahu rose to power in 1996 when Israel was undergoing major changes. Three years earlier, Israel, led by Labour Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) had signed the Oslo Accord. The PLO recognised the state of Israel and the latter agreed to the formation of a provisional government (Palestinian Authority or PA) in the occupied territories. After the tumultuous period of the first Intifada (the Palestinian uprising) that began in 1987, there was a strong constituency in Israel for peace. But this period also saw the growing strength of the political Right and the threat of Jewish extremism. On November 4, 1995, Prime Minister Rabin the main architect of the Oslo Accords, was assassinated by a Jewish extremist. Rabin’s successor Shimon Peres called for early elections, which he thought would strengthen his hands to go ahead with the peace plan. But in the election, the first direct election to choose the Prime Minister, Mr. Netanyahu, a hardline critic of the Oslo process, emerged victorious.

In power, Mr. Netanyahu made some minor concessions, but walked back on several promises his immediate predecessors had made. When the Palestinian Authority was formed, both sides agreed that it would be the first step of an ambitious peace plan. The real goal was to find a permanent solution to the Palestine question through the two-state proposal. But the PA, with limited powers in parts of the occupied lands, became a permanent mechanism as the Oslo process unravelled under Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership. His version was that the peace process made Palestinian militancy stronger. Hamas, the Islamist movement that had also opposed the Oslo Accords, had carried out several suicide attacks during this period. Mr. Netanyahu held the PA, then led by Yasser Arafat, responsible for increased violence. Dennis Ross, U.S. President Bill Clinton’s peace envoy, then said “neither President Clinton nor Secretary [of State Madeleine] Albright believed that Bibi had any real interest in pursuing peace.”

The Three Nos

Mr. Netanyahu has been consistently opposed to making any major concessions to the Palestinians. For him, “undivided Jerusalem” is Israel’s “eternal capital”. He is staunchly against the return of the Palestinian refugees (who were forced to flee their homes in 1948 when the state of Israel was formed) as part of any settlement. “Any demand for resettling Palestinian refugees within Israel undermines Israel’s continued existence as the state of the Jewish people,” he once said. He resolutely opposed Ariel Sharon’s decision to unilaterally pull back Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005. “The unilateral evacuation brought neither peace nor security,” said Mr. Netanyahu. He has also consistently supported Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories, which for him is the “natural growth” of the population.

In September 1967, a few months after the June war, Arab countries passed the ‘Three Nos’ resolution in the Khartoum summit — “No peace with Israel, No negotiations with Israel and No recognition of Israel”. In an indirect reference to the Khartoum resolution, Mr. Netanyahu, as Prime Minister, emphasised a policy of “Three Nos — “No withdrawal from the Golan Heights, No discussion of the status of Jerusalem and No negotiations under any preconditions.”

Arab countries have gone back on the Khartoum Nos. In 1994, a year after the first Oslo Accord was signed, Jordan reached a peace treaty with Israel. In 2020, four more Arab countries — the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan (where the Khartoum summit took place) and Morocco — normalised ties with Israel. But Mr. Netanyahu has not compromised on any of his Nos. On the other side, he tightened Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and enforced a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, which saw repeated, disproportionate Israeli bombardments in retaliation for rocket attacks by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

When Israel’s polity has clearly shifted rightwards, Mr. Netanyahu, by stitching together alliances with Jewish Orthodox and ultranationalist parties, has reaped political dividends. Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister is set to begin yet another term. This time, his key ally is Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of Religious Zionism, who wants to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and “deport” “disloyal” Arab citizens.

Foreign policy

Mr. Netanyahu is also known for his hawkish position towards Iran, Israel’s main rival in West Asia. He risked a complete breakdown in ties with the White House when he took his opposition to the Barack Obama-supported Iran nuclear deal to the U.S. Congress in 2015. Under his leadership, Israel also emerged as the key security player in West Asia, targeting Iran and in partnership with Arab countries, a relationship which is likely to thrive in a fast-changing region. He also chose to strengthen Israel’s ties with other major powers, including Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Narendra Modi’s India. As Prime Minister, he visited India twice, and hosted Mr. Modi, the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel.

But after spending 15 years in power and playing a critical role in shaping Israel’s domestic politics and foreign policy, Mr. Netanyahu hasn’t resolved any of his country’s security problems. Whatever he inherited — whether it’s Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran — are still plaguing the Jewish state. Israel continues to live in a volatile regional security environment. Domestically, the rise of the far-right, most of them Netanyahu allies, has challenged the social stability of the country, where Arab citizens make up some 20% of the population. But Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t seem to be perturbed. He thrives in crisis. His response to security challenges is to double down the military option and his response to the surge of the far-right is to embrace them — crisis at home, crisis abroad, Bibi remains the king. His legacy is perhaps defined by this permanence of crisis, unless he seeks to break the pattern in his new term.

Published – November 06, 2022 02:17 am IST

A file image of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: Pool via Reuters