The US midterms have coloured the country’s political climate blue. How will this affect the president’s support for Israel?
No nation had more at stake in the US midterm elections on Tuesday than Israel and, by extension, the Palestinian territories in Gaza and the West Bank. What was framed as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Democrats to regain control of Congress simultaneously became a referendum on America’s historic relationship with the Jewish nation. And no matter who ultimately forms a government after Israel’s inconclusive elections last week, the results of the US midterms will affect the Middle Eastern country’s own fraught and war-weary electorate.
The most consequential midterm race for Israel, if not the entire Middle East, was in Michigan. There, Abdul el-Sayed – an Egyptian-American physician, former Rhodes Scholar and Columbia University assistant professor who led a series of major public health departments – became the state’s next Democrat senator and the first Muslim senator in US history. His win helped to secure the party’s hopes of regaining Congress. But the success of El-Sayed, who battled endless accusations of antisemitism and Islamic fundamentalism during the race, will likely call into question the ideological alignment between Washington and Israel, with clear implications for the presidential race in two years’ time.
Former vice-president and unsuccessful 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has teased a 2028 run, highlighting Donald Trump’s failure to moderate Israel’s conduct in Gaza. And former president Barack Obama has also been ratcheting up his critiques of Israel as he took to helping Democratic candidates nationwide. Late last month in Michigan, for example, he rallied alongside El-Sayed a few weeks after Harris.
On Tuesday, Trump announced that he had made a deal with Benjamin Netanyahu to reduce annual funding to Israel. Netanyahu, it appears, was well aware of possible international sanctions, having suggested on 25 October that the country might need to use cryptocurrency to bypass them. His comment might have been pre-election hyperbole but the nation nevertheless seems poised to withstand the rescinding of such a seismic and symbolic economic input: its economy is surging, particularly across the tech and investment sectors.
It is more difficult to predict how Trump will go about exacting his plans in the region following this week’s Democratic sweep. The election results will undoubtedly influence how long the president can continue his war in Iran, which he has suggested will resume after the elections. At the same time, he is trying to regain steam for his faltering Board of Peace, recently hiring a former Biden official to help secure bipartisan support for his delayed Gaza reconstruction plan. For now, we can at least expect far stronger pressure on whoever becomes Israel’s next leader to crack down on settler violence in the West Bank, thanks, in large part, to a US in the throes of change.
David Kaufman is a contributing writer at Monocle. For further reactions to the US elections, tune in to Monocle Radio. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
