In Trump, Israel’s mainstream distrusts

Times of Israel

Israel values stability, consistency, and reliability from its most important ally. Which is why, while they may have reservations about Hillary Clinton, many Israeli policymakers and much of the public are wary of the unpredictable Trump

For Yossi Klein Halevi, an American-born Israeli author and speaker, the 2016 presidential election wasn’t supposed to be like this. After eight years of President Barack Obama, Halevi, a centrist who has been highly critical of the outgoing president’s Middle East posture and in particular of last year’s nuclear deal with Iran, was prepared to go all in against the Democrats.

But from Halevi’s perspective, this election season saw the emergence of a far more dangerous menace from an unexpected source: the putatively pro-Israel Republican Party’s nominee for president, Donald Trump.

“I was so looking forward to 2016 as an opportunity to punish the Democrats,” says Halevi. “But given the way that this election has turned out, my far greater fear is a Trump victory.”

When it comes to mainstream public opinion in Israel, Halevi is far from alone. A poll released Sunday by the Peace Index, conducted jointly by Tel Aviv University and the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), shows that the Israeli public prefers a Hillary Clinton administration over a Donald Trump ticket by an overwhelming tally of 42% to 24%. At a political moment when Republicans are attempting to persuade American Jews that they, and not the Democrats, are to be trusted on Israel, it is the Republican Party’s appointed standard-bearer whom far more Israelis appear not to trust with the US-Israel relationship.

Itamar Rabinovich, who presided over some of the warmest years of the US-Israel relationship as Israel’s ambassador to the United States under prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and during the early years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, is unsurprised that Republican efforts have been unpersuasive to Israelis. For an Israel that, he says, above all values stability, consistency, and reliability from its most important ally and the leader of the most powerful country in the world, Trump is perceived as anything but.

“The general perception is that Trump is totally unpredictable,” says Rabinovich, who now serves as president of the Israel Institute. “In a crucial relationship like the one between the US and Israel, that is perceived very negatively.”

For the Israeli public, says Rabinovich, it appears that “Trump is someone who is not really interested in and knowledgeable” about matters of foreign policy. “[Trump] has changed his mind and contradicted himself a number of times, which doesn’t help.”

When asked if he shares the concerns of the public when it comes to Trump, Rabinovich answers simply, “Yes, I do.”

These concerns appear to transcend political eras. Dan Arbell, former acting head of the North America division at the Foreign Ministry from 2005 to 2009 before serving for three years as deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC and ambassador Michael Oren’s second-in-command (during the early years of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current premiership), sounds a similar note of alarm.

“There are a lot of unknowns [about Trump] which makes me as an Israeli pretty anxious,” says Arbell, now a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a lecturer at American University in Washington, DC.

Trump’s inconsistency from one day to the next is disconcerting, says Arbell, particularly in the wake of the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding that will see the United States give $38 billion in military assistance to Israel over the next 10 years.

“While Trump declares he is pro-Israel and supports Israeli security,” Arbell says, when it comes to “the different statements he has made on foreign aid, including foreign aid to Israel, it becomes somewhat hard to square the circle.”

Ditto his policies vis-à-vis the peace process. “The policies on the Palestinian-Israeli front are also a big question mark,” Arbell says. “He said he would be ‘neutral’ during the Republican primary. Then he said he would have Israel’s back.

“It’s unclear what his philosophy is and what his policies will be.”

Arbell, who still maintains contacts with several of his former colleagues in the Foreign Ministry, believes that Trump’s unknowns could become a real issue among Israel’s current diplomatic corps charged with guiding the Jewish state’s relationship with the United States. “The official position is that [the ministry] does not interfere” in the election, says Arbell. “But if I have to read in between the lines, I think that people share the opinion that Trump is an unknown.”

For Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Trump’s unknowns “can work in your favor or it can work against you,” says Arbell, but “the unpredictability is very hard on those who are policymakers.”[...]