News Analysis
President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are using similar strategies when faced with upheaval.
Before President Barack Obama took office in 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu unexpectedly called Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas and asked him to teach him a lesson in what was essentially a foreign language: the language of democrats.
“I speak Republican and you speak Democratic, and I need a mediator,” said Mr. Netanyahu, who Mr. Pinkas said was set to become Israel’s prime minister. He added: “Netanyahu has always considered himself a kind of pedigreed neoconservative who belongs to the right wing of the Republican Party.”
Mr Netanyahu, who will meet with President Trump at the White House on Monday, is again talking to representatives of his preferred party, and the difference is striking.
While former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. sought to impose some restrictions on Mr. Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza, the Trump administration has made no such demand. While Mr. Biden criticized Mr. Netanyahu’s attempt to overhaul Israeli courts, Mr. Trump has launched his own attacks on American judges.
“They’re not shackled,” said Nathan Sachs, director of the Center for Near East Policy and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. “A lot of the concerns that the previous White House continued to raise about humanitarian aid, about limiting civilian casualties, those concerns are no longer being raised.”
A flashpoint loomed at the meeting this week: Mr. Trump’s massive tariffs, which have not spared Israel. Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the two men planned to discuss the tariffs, the war in Gaza, relations between Israel and Turkey, Iran and the International Criminal Court.
