Netanyahu Warns Israel Must Prepare for a Possibly Hostile US President, Puts India at the Centre of His Alliance Plan
TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that a future American president could turn hostile towards Israel, and called on the country to urgently build new alliances — naming India as a key partner — in a significant shift of emphasis from the bedrock relationship with Washington.
Speaking on Sunday while presenting his new security doctrine, Netanyahu said Israel must prepare for the possibility that Washington's political direction could change within two years. His remarks, made nine days before Israel's parliamentary election on October 27, framed the warning in stark terms.
"In two years, a President, man or woman, could come to power who is very hostile to Israel," Netanyahu said. "How would you deal with that? How would you operate in relation to the United States? And beyond that, what solutions would be necessary?"
The Israeli leader outlined a two-part strategy. The first part involves making maximum use of the remaining years of US President Donald Trump's tenure to strengthen Israel's position in Washington. "First, we must do everything we can during these two years, and during the following two years, in the American arena, through good times and bad," he said.
The second part is the more striking one: a deliberate effort to create alternative alliances so that Israel is not left exposed if American support wavers. "The second thing is to create other alliances. That is what I am working on now with many countries in our region and outside it. India is not a small country, and there are many others," he said.
Netanyahu also pointed to political developments in Latin America as a fertile ground for new partnerships. "There is a major shift in Latin America, and there could be an enormous change in Brazil in just a few days," he said, adding: "We must expand our pool of alliances and develop capabilities that make us valuable to everyone."
India has figured prominently and repeatedly in Netanyahu's recent public arguments about Israel's international standing. He has often cited his relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as evidence that Israel is not isolated internationally. Earlier this year, he described the relationship as "unique", called India a "huge power", and said there was "crazy love" for Israel in India.
The timing of the remarks added a layer of political drama. Hours after Netanyahu presented his security doctrine on Sunday, US President Donald Trump publicly endorsed his re-election bid — a strong show of support from the current White House that sat in visible tension with Netanyahu's warning about a possible future administration.
The emphasis on India is not rhetorical flourish alone; it rests on one of the fastest-deepening bilateral relationships in Israeli diplomacy. India recognised Israel as early as 1950 but established full diplomatic relations only in January 1992, and for decades kept ties deliberately low-profile, balancing them against its long-standing support for the Palestinian cause and its interests in the Arab world.
The relationship's decisive turn came under Prime Minister Modi, whose standalone visit to Israel in July 2017 — the first by any Indian prime minister — elevated ties to the level of a strategic partnership. Netanyahu returned the visit with a tour of India in January 2018, and the two leaders have since projected an unusually warm personal rapport, with Netanyahu repeatedly describing Modi as his friend.
Defence has been the backbone of that partnership from the start. Israel supplied arms to India even before formal ties — during the 1962 war with China and, famously, rush supplies of precision-guided munitions during the 1999 Kargil conflict — and the post-1992 decades turned the relationship into one of the world's most durable arms-trade partnerships.
India has long been Israel's largest buyer of military equipment, accounting for a major share of Israeli defence exports, while Israel ranks among India's biggest suppliers of weapons.
The catalogue of deals spans the jointly developed Barak-8 air-defence system, Heron and Searcher drones, Tavor rifles, Phalcon airborne surveillance radars and Spike anti-tank missiles, alongside one of the largest contracts in Israeli defence history — a roughly two-billion-dollar missile and air-defence package for the Indian forces signed before Modi's 2017 visit.
What has changed in the last decade is that the partnership has been deliberately broadened beyond the arms trade. Agriculture has become a flagship of cooperation, with Israeli drip-irrigation technology and dozens of bilateral centres of excellence training Indian farmers in horticulture, protected cultivation and water conservation.
Water management, homeland security, cyber security, space and innovation have all been added to the agenda, and the two governments approved a 40-million-dollar joint fund for business and innovation cooperation ahead of Modi's 2017 visit.
India, for its part, has pursued a policy of de-hyphenating its relationships — engaging Israel and the Palestinians on separate tracks rather than treating the two as linked — a shift that Israeli officials have welcomed as validation of their long-standing argument.
That history explains why Netanyahu keeps returning to India as his exhibit A. For an Israeli leader seeking to prove that the country is not isolated, India offers something no Latin American or African partner can: a large democracy and rising power whose embrace of Israel predates his doctrine and has deepened steadily across governments and decades.
When Netanyahu says he wants to "develop capabilities that make us valuable to everyone", it is an echo of the pitch he has been making to New Delhi for years — that countries seek out Israel for its technology, intelligence, agriculture and counter-terrorism expertise, and that those commercial and strategic ties translate into diplomatic goodwill.
Opposition figures in Israel, however, pushed back against the framing. Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot criticised the security doctrine, accusing Netanyahu of using fear to shape public opinion ahead of the election — a charge that reflects the intensely politicised atmosphere in Israel with polling day just over a week away.
The remarks also land at a delicate moment for Israel's international image. The country has faced sustained international criticism and diplomatic pressure, and Netanyahu has invested heavily in projecting an image of global support — frequently pointing to India and to ties with countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America as proof that Israel is not cut off from the world.
Analysts note that the warning about a future US president is not entirely new. American politics has swung sharply between administrations in recent years, and Israeli strategists have long debated how to hedge against a less supportive White House. What is new is the candour with which Netanyahu stated it publicly — and the explicit elevation of India and other non-Western partners as part of the answer.
The election on October 27 will decide whether Netanyahu continues to lead Israel and steer its foreign policy. Until then, his doctrine has set the terms of the debate: Israel, in his telling, must plan for a world in which even its closest ally cannot be taken for granted — and India stands near the front of the new queue of friends.
(Reporting based on NDTV and The Economic Times.)