With one day only before the US presidential elections, Opposition Chair Yair Lapid accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of tampering with American bipartisan support of Israel by alienating the Democratic Party. He said that Netanyahu was motivated only by personal interests instead of the interests of the state of Israel.
Speaking at the opening of his Knesset faction weekly meeting, Lapid said, “Until a few years Israel was above politics in the United States. We were a bipartisan issue. All the governments of Israel preserved good relations with the Democrats and the Republicans. Netanyahu decided, mostly for internal reasons, to break with that principle. Netanyahu created an almost complete identification between the current Israeli government and the Republican Party, between himself and President Trump. He wanted to use President Trump’s justified popularity in Israel to gain some points at home.’’ Lapid added, "Israel cannot afford to be a branch of the Republican Party,” warning that “Israel is losing the Democratic Party.”