Trump, the peacemaker, can make peace in Israel - opinion

If the polls are close to being right, voting stations across the country will close on Tuesday night at 10 p.m. without answering the most important question facing the country: Where does Israel go from here?

Neither political bloc will have a majority – neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor Gadi Eisenkot – and Israel will once again face the prospect of political paralysis and potentially another election.

In that scenario, much of the responsibility would fall on President Isaac Herzog. He would meet with the different party leaders, hear their recommendations, and decide who should receive the mandate to try to form a government.

He might also attempt to bring the sides together, hoping to find a formula that could prevent Israel from returning to the destructive cycle of elections as we had in the years before October 7.

But there is another president whose role in this process could be just as consequential: Donald Trump.

Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu this week was interesting not only because of its timing – just days before Israelis go to the polls – but because of the reasoning behind it. Trump made clear that his support for Netanyahu was tied to Iran.

Netanyahu, he said, is the partner he needs to finish the job and topple the Iranian regime. With someone else in power, Trump warned, America might have to finish the job alone, and that is something he does not want to do.

Whether that is true is a good question. But the endorsement revealed something else about how Trump sees what happens next. For him, the Israeli election is not only about who wins in Israel. It is also about what the US will do when it comes to Iran.

Imagine the following scenario: The election here ends without a decisive victory for either side, and amid attempts to build a minority coalition or attract defectors from one side to the other, Trump invites Netanyahu and Eisenkot to the White House.

Netanyahu would happily accept. Eisenkot would be less enthusiastic, knowing what he would be walking into. But he would not be able to refuse the invitation. The two Israeli politicians would arrive in Washington, and Trump would present them with a proposition: I need both of you to form a government so we can finish the job in Iran.

For Netanyahu, it would be a dream come true, while for Eisenkot, the political cost would be huge. The Yashar leader promised just on Wednesday that he would not agree to a rotation agreement with Netanyahu.

But Trump could offer him something that might force him to reconsider: a national unity government built around a shared strategic objective of taking on Iran, alongside Trump serving as the guarantor that Netanyahu would honor a future transfer of power.

Could Trump actually enforce such an agreement? Not legally. But if Netanyahu were to break a commitment made at the White House, he would risk not only embarrassing Trump but also damaging his relationship with a president whose support he considers essential to Israel’s security.

What Trump could do is force Netanyahu to agree to only 18 months as prime minister. That would leave Trump roughly another six months in office to exert pressure if Netanyahu tried to block the transition.

Is this imaginary scenario difficult to see happening, considering the personal animosity and broken trust between Netanyahu and Eisenkot? Yes. But is it impossible? No.

For this to happen, though, Israelis would need to be able to trust their leaders, something that is very hard right now as Netanyahu beats the war drums on a daily – and even hourly – basis with just days left to the election. His threats reached a point this week that raised concerns that Israel might attack Iran at any moment or might even be trying to provoke Iran to attack first.

On the one hand, there is no question that the danger is real. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and its development of long-range ballistic missiles pose a grave threat to Israel. The question is not whether this needs to be confronted but rather whether it needs to be confronted right now.

The public does not know the answer, and neither do most members of Israel’s political establishment. Only a handful of people have access to the intelligence needed to determine what Iran is actually doing, how immediate the threat is, and whether military action can wait.

If Iran is actively building a nuclear bomb and intelligence indicates that it is approaching a point of no return, Israel may have no choice but to act, regardless of the election. But if the threat is likely to be essentially the same in a few weeks or months, then the current government needs to exercise extreme caution.

If Netanyahu decides to attack, even for the best and most legitimate of reasons, most Israelis will suspect that his motives are political. Even if the attack is entirely justified, people will believe that its timing was designed to influence the outcome of the election.

This brings us to the heart of the problem. Israel is suffering from a deep crisis of trust. An operation that might genuinely be necessary to strengthen the country’s security could end up further undermining public confidence in the government and even the IDF, simply because so many Israelis would not believe that it had to happen.

This is where Trump could play another important role.

If the US decides to participate in another military operation against Iran, that would provide Israelis with an indication that the threat is serious and that the decision is not simply a political move by Netanyahu. American participation would not eliminate the questions, but it would give the decision a level of credibility that Netanyahu cannot provide on his own.

There is another person whose voice could be even more important to Israelis: IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir.

Zamir was appointed under Netanyahu, but he is not seen as a political loyalist and has already proven that he is ready to challenge the cabinet when he believes that Israel’s security interests are in jeopardy.

A public address by Zamir, explaining what he can about the danger, its urgency, and the military considerations behind any decision to act, would provide assurances that are currently missing. It is obviously not Zamir’s job to endorse Netanyahu’s political arguments, but he is responsible for protecting the IDF and preserving public trust in it.

Without that trust, even the right decisions can come at a terrible cost.

The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD policy forum, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. His newest book is While Israel Slept.