US Press
Axios reports Trump withholds an endorsement of Netanyahu before October
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Axios reported on Friday that Donald Trump has stopped short of endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu as the Israeli prime minister's campaign falters before the election of 27 October.
The scene the site published is the story. When the two men met in the Oval Office a fortnight ago, Trump asked Netanyahu how he was doing in the polls. Netanyahu paused. One of his advisers filled the silence: "Mr. President, he is winning."
The polls the two were discussing do not say that. Maariv's survey this week put Likud at 21 seats and gave Gadi Eisenkot a double-digit lead over Netanyahu on suitability for prime minister, with the Zionist opposition bloc at 61.
An American endorsement is not a small thing in an Israeli campaign, and Netanyahu has built much of his standing on the claim that he alone manages Washington. Trump's silence is being read in Israel as a bargaining position while the White House presses him to accept the fifteen-point Gaza plan he rejected in public.
For Palestinians the calculation runs the other way round. The same president who is withholding the endorsement is the author of the plan, and the price of buying Netanyahu's agreement to it is being negotiated in Gaza, where the ceasefire has held only in name.
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