Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose political survival hinges on the general election set for the 27th, has asked U.S. President Donald Trump to show more public support for his campaign, Axios reported on the 25th.
A U.S. source said the Trump administration views Netanyahu's aggressive requests as a sign of desperation, reading them as an indication that the prime minister believes he is trailing.
According to the source, Netanyahu spoke with Trump twice over the past three days, asking him to add weight to his posts of support on Truth Social. He is said to have gone as far as proposing wording for additional statements of support. An Israeli source said Netanyahu suggested that Trump speak by phone with Israeli reporters to state his backing more explicitly. Two weeks earlier, Trump had called on Israeli figures to come out in support of Netanyahu in an interview with Newsmax.
On the 25th, Trump again issued a statement backing Netanyahu and urging Israelis to vote for him, citing the prime minister's hard line on Iran as the main reason. Trump wrote on Truth Social that he and Netanyahu have had a great relationship in which they won together, as everyone including their enemies knows, and asked voters to remember that Netanyahu was an outstanding wartime prime minister when they go to the polls. He added that Israelis should vote for Netanyahu as prime minister because the work they started must be finished.
In final pre-election polls released on the 23rd by Israel's three main broadcasters, all three surveys showed Netanyahu's bloc winning 50 of the 120 seats, far short of a parliamentary majority. That is 17 fewer than its current standing. Likud, which now holds 32 seats, was projected to take just 20. The opposition bloc led by former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot was put at 52 to 56 seats, and two Arab-Israeli parties at 14 to 16. Channel 11 projected four seats for a reservists' party aligned with neither bloc. Separately, Channel 14, a fourth broadcaster not among the three cited above and known to lean pro-Netanyahu, projected 60 seats for the bloc and 30 for Likud in an earlier survey this week.
Meanwhile, a U.S. official assessed that the endorsement benefits Trump regardless of the outcome. If Netanyahu wins or stays on as head of a caretaker government, Trump can claim credit for having saved him politically and use that as leverage to press for concessions. Even if Netanyahu loses and the rival bloc forms a government, analysts said the new leadership would have ample incentive to build a good relationship with Trump.