Nonresident Senior Fellow Richard LeBaron writes for US News and World Report on how the United States and Israel move forward in the wake of Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection:
Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have won the opportunity to lead Israel for a fourth term, but the problems he has created with his principal foreign ally only worsened in the course of his campaign. The speech to Congress, a deliberate insult to the president of the United States, was bad enough, but things got even worse when Netanyahu, in the last gasp of his election campaign, proceeded to deny any intention to negotiate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contradicting his own stated policy in order to appeal to right-wing voters. I don’t believe there is a crisis in fundamental Israeli-U.S. ties, but Netanyahu’s actions have contributed to a steady erosion of the bond. This erosion is exemplified by the naked politicization of the links between an Israeli government and American right-wing figures, a growing sense among elements of the Israeli government that there is no cost associated with poking your best friend in the eye and the resulting emergence in the United States of new and perhaps useful questions about the nature of U.S.-Israel relations. Fixing this starts with a a sober assessment of how Israelis view the United States.