Can Israel move past Netanyahu?

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. As President Trump ponders a second military strike on Iran, the relationship between the U.S. and Israel is evolving.

The Trump administration cooperated with Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities last summer, a goal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long sought. But Mr. Netanyahu is discovering, as others have before him, that Mr.

Trump’s relationship with longtime allies is utterly unsentimental. After pressuring Israel to end the war in Gaza earlier than Mr. Netanyahu wanted, Mr.

Trump overrode Israel’s objections and invited Turkey and Qatar to join the new U.S.-sponsored Board of Peace tasked with overseeing Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu, who had effectively ended Israel’s longstanding quest for bipartisan American support in favor of an alliance with the Republican Party, had no choice but to acquiesce.

To assess what might come next, on Jan. 24 I interviewed Yossi Klein Halevi, an American-born Israeli and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish research and education center in Jerusalem. Mr.

Klein Halevi is one of the shrewdest and most thoughtful analysts of Israeli politics and society. The war in Gaza, he said, was traumatic for Israeli Jews—an effect that may not wear off quickly—and should have ended sooner than it did. Mr.

Klein Halevi framed the war as part of a multistage effort to end the Iranian threat to Israel’s existence. Stage one—attacks on Iran’s proxy terrorist networks—eroded the Iran-backed encirclement of Israel in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Stage two—last summer’s strikes—weakened Iran’s nuclear program, the core of the threat.