“Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America,” the Israeli premier said in a statement.
Nov 6, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s rightist government celebrated on Wednesday after Republican Donald Trump claimed victory in the US presidential election.
The outcome is a relief for Netanyahu’s coalition, which has clashed with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
Congratulating Trump, Netanyahu said the former president was set for “history’s greatest comeback.”
“Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America,” he said in a statement.
“This is a huge victory.”
Far-right ministers in the government also welcomed the results.
“Yesssss, God bless Trump,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who heads one of two hardline, pro-settler parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, said on X.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads the other pro-settler party, said: “God bless Israel, God bless America.”
Israel’s settler leaders also welcomed the election results after Biden’s administration imposed sanctions and asset freezes on settler groups and individuals involved in violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“We expect to have an ally standing unconditionally beside us as we fight the battles that are a war on the entire West,” Israel Ganz, chairman of the main Yesha settler council, said in a statement to Reuters.
The first Trump administration delivered major wins to Netanyahu, when it went against most of the world in recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and accepting Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
But it was not clear whether Trump’s new administration will lend the same support in the middle of a war that could directly draw in the United States, said Burcu Ozcelik, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Topping a complex list of unknowns is how much leverage Trump will have over Netanyahu,” she said.
Despite friction between Netanyahu and Biden, the administration provided unstinting support to Israel since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 that triggered the Gaza war.
Nearly two-thirds of Israelis believe Trump would be better for Israel than his Democratic Party rival Kamala Harris, according to a survey from the Israel Democracy Institute.
“I think it’s good for Israel,” said Jerusalem resident Nissim Attias. “He proved the last time he was the president, he moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and everything that he said, he did.”
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