Will US-Israel relations go down in flames with the Trump presidency?

• Date: 07 January 2021
• Author: LAHAV HARKOV
• Published date: 07 January 2021

The storming of the Capitol and the unfounded claims that the election was "stolen" from departing US President Donald Trump have nothing to do with Israel.

But Israel will have to reckon with Trump's legacy and his massive footprint in the Middle East.

Looking back at the past four years, Trump checked off one policy after another on Israel's wish list.

His administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital; it recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; and it put forward a peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians that almost looked like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote it himself.

The Trump administration declared settlements to not necessarily be illegal. It allowed Israelis born in Jerusalem to write "Israel" on their passports, and for products manufactured in Judea and Samaria to be labeled "made in Israel."

The Trump administration left the deal that gave Iran a path to a nuclear bomb and replaced it with sanctions, sanctions, and more sanctions. And it convinced other countries in the region that view Iran as an adversary to sign historic peace agreements with Israel.

All along, Netanyahu and others in Israel made sure to lavish praise on the mercurial president, who is known to be susceptible to flattery.

Not that the compliments weren't genuine. It's clear from some of the political moves Netanyahu has picked up from Trump that the prime minister respected the way the president plays the political game.

And public opinion polls repeatedly showed that most Israelis approved of Trump. At one point polls even showed that in the whole world, Israel was the country that liked Trump best.

The effect has been the creation of an image of near-total identification between Israel and Trump, along with total identification between recent US policies favoring Israel and Trump.

With Trump ending his presidency with his supporters violently attacking a symbol of American democracy, is the US-Israel relationship going to go down with him?

Israel's leadership would be wise to start doing something it should have done months ago, when it was clear Joe Biden had won the presidential election, and start distancing itself from President Trump, even while standing its ground on his policies that made Israel stronger.

Netanyahu has stayed as effusive as ever when it comes to Trump. The reasoning behind doing so was clear. After all, former president Barack Obama took the damaging step of letting a UN Security Council resolution condemning...