The bar facing the US embassy building in central Jerusalem is called Deja Bu – a witty reference to something you’ve drunk before.
And outside the gates of the US compound, Israel is eager for a second round of Donald Trump.
“I’m very pleased,” said Rafael Shore, a rabbi who lives in Jerusalem’s Old City. “He understands the language of the Middle East.
“Iran will think twice about doing anything. I think if Kamala had been elected, there wouldn’t be much fear in the Middle East of attacking America or Israel.”
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was one of the first to congratulate the new president-elect this morning. “Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!” he tweeted.
Netanyahu has previously called Trump the “best friend Israel has ever had in the White House”.
The bar facing the US embassy building in central Jerusalem is called Deja Bu – a witty reference to something you’ve drunk before.
And outside the gates of the US compound, Israel is eager for a second round of Donald Trump.
“I’m very pleased,” said Rafael Shore, a rabbi who lives in Jerusalem’s Old City. “He understands the language of the Middle East.
“Iran will think twice about doing anything. I think if Kamala had been elected, there wouldn’t be much fear in the Middle East of attacking America or Israel.”
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was one of the first to congratulate the new president-elect this morning. “Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!” he tweeted.
Netanyahu has previously called Trump the “best friend Israel has ever had in the White House”
Trump previously won favour here by scrapping an Iran nuclear deal that Israel opposed, brokering historic normalisation agreements with several Arab countries and upending decades of US policy – and international consensus – by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Donald Trump’s first term in office was “exemplary” as far as Israel is concerned, said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US.
“The hope is that he’ll revisit that. [But] we have to be very clear-sighted about who Donald Trump is and what he stands for.”
Firstly, he said, the former president “doesn’t like wars”, seeing them as expensive. Trump has urged Israel to finish the war in Gaza quickly.
He’s also “not a big fan” of Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, said Amb Oren, and has opposed the wishes of some Israeli leaders to annex parts of it.
Both those policies could put him in conflict with far-right parties in Netanyahu’s current governing coalition, who have threatened to bring down the government if the prime minister pursues policies they reject.
