Israel-Hamas war| Trump's criticism of Israeli PM Netanyahu: How did a friendship sour?

Former US president Donald Trump is using his campaign plank for next year's elections to inject himself into the Israel-Hamas war, and in the process, has been attacking Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was once upon a time his close friend.

On various platforms this week, Trump lashed out atNetanyahu in the wake of the dastardly Hamas terror attack on Israel last weekend that left nearly 1,300 mostly civilian Israelis dead.

It would have been unthinkable some years ago, as he shared a warm relationship with Netanyahu in the past.

On Wednesday (Oct 12), Trump said Netanyahu was caught unprepared for Hamas' attack even as he praising the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as "very smart".

While the comments highlight the strained relationship between the two men, it also is a departure from other Republican contenders for president,all of whom have tried to portray themselves as steadfast supporters of Netanyahu.

“(Netanyahu) has been hurt very badly because of what’s happened here. He was not prepared...and Israel was not prepared,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade in an interview clip that aired Wednesday night.

Trump dug his heels into the same allegations at a campaign event in West Palm Beach, Florida.

“When I see sometimes the intelligence, you talk about the intelligence, or you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week, they’ve got to straighten it out because they’re fighting potentially a very big force,” Trump said about the alleged intelligence failure of Israel.

On Hezbollah, he said: “They’re vicious, and they’re smart. And, boy, are they vicious, because nobody’s ever seen the kind of sight that we’ve seen”, Trump said regarding Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group.

Trump and Netanyahu: How a friendship soured

Trump's new stance against Netanyahu is a sharp departure from the bonhomie the two had shared when he was in office, during which he embraced the Israeli prime minister at every opportunity.

Trump was an ardent supporter of Netanyahu during his term. The Iran nuclear deal was finally terminated by him in 2018, and he effectively sided with Israel in negotiations with the Palestinians by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and approving the annexation of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Israel. Trump also helped Israel reach the Abraham Accords, which set off a chain reaction of the Jewish nation's normalisation with several Arab countries.

The current hostility appears motivated by Netanyahu's openly approvalthat Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election.

In the months that followed, Trump had accused Netanyahu of disloyalty and fumed to Axios, “F*** him.”

Trump eventually complimented Netanyahu once he took back office in the latter part of last year, but his hostility towards him hasn't diminished, experts say.

Trump continues to believe that Netanyahu shouldn't have made comments regarding Biden's victory.

Trump once more brought up his false claims of election fraud during the campaign event on Wednesday night, and he implied that the Hamas attack wouldn't have occurred if he were president.

“If the [2020] election wasn’t rigged, there would be nobody even thinking about going into Israel,” the former president told his supporters.

He also invoked the US government’s 2020 killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and claimed Israel declined to participate in the strike.

“I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing, I will say that,” Trump said. He was possibly referring to a last-minute pull-out by Israel from actively participating in the killing of Soleimani, who eventually died in a targeted drone assassination.

At the time, however, Netanyahu praised the strike after the fact, saying it was justified because Soleimani “was planning further attacks” on Israel.

What Netanyahu has to say

In the recent times, Netanyahu appeared to have shrugged off Trump's newfound hatred for him.

When CNN pressed Netanyahu in his last interview with the network in September about whether the newfound hostility from Trump bothered him, the Israeli PM said, “I’ve been long enough in the political life to put aside the periodic ebb and flow of emotion and to look at the substantive positions that leaders and allies have done.

"So, yeah, I don’t particularly care for that. I mean, I don’t care about it, is the way I would say it.”

Although Trump's remarks about Netanyahu are personal, Israeli officials have acknowledged they were caught by surprise when Hamas launched its attack on October 7.

Officials from the US have also claimed that, like Israelis, they did not receive any intelligence indicating that this particular attack would take place.

(With inputs from agencies)

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