Israeli Press
Trump tells Fox News he will stay out of Israel's October election
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
The Newsdesk gathers reporting from wire services and primary sources and rewrites every story in-house before publication. How our journalism is made →
Benjamin Netanyahu goes into the October election without the endorsement he has campaigned on before, and the American president said so himself this week.
Maariv reported on Monday that Trump had confirmed the paper's earlier account, telling Fox News that it is best he stay out of Israel's elections. The paper noted he did not close the door entirely.
Axios had reported on 15 August that the president was withholding an endorsement of the prime minister before the vote.
Why an absence is a statement#
Trump's public embrace has been part of Netanyahu's electoral equipment for a decade. An American president who declines to repeat it, in an interview, in the week of his party's primary, is making a choice that Israeli political reporters read immediately.
The Israeli press has offered two readings. One is transactional: the administration wants movement on the Gaza roadmap that Netanyahu rejected on 9 August, and an endorsement is leverage it prefers to keep. The other is arithmetical: the polls have Likud shedding roughly seven seats, and a president who backs losers does not like to be seen doing it.
Both readings appeared in the same papers that reported his son-in-law spending four hours in the prime minister's office the same day.
What it means for Palestinians#
Very little directly, and a great deal indirectly. Netanyahu's campaign rests on the argument that only he can manage Washington, and the White House has just declined to confirm it in public.
Whether that costs him seats is an Israeli question. What follows from it is a Palestinian one, because the coalition arithmetic on 27 October decides who signs, or refuses, on annexation, on Gaza's second phase, and on the settlements that produced Qusra.
