Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on traveling to the White House three months before the Israeli election signals his desperation to boost his sinking fortunes at the polls, Haaretz senior columnist Esther Solomon told the Haaretz Election Podcast.

Despite his unpopularity with major portions of both American political parties and his turbulent relationship with President Donald Trump regarding the ongoing conflict with Iran, the Israeli leader “does still think that a photo op with Trump is going to play well for him, even though it's not entirely clear if Trump is going to provide exactly the kind of celebratory hugs” he wishes for, Solomon said.

But in his current political situation, the Israeli leader “has to pull out every single stop, and he is doing that across the board. Whether it's in terms of military operations, every kind of political manipulation or strategy that he has, in order to pull every last possible vote for the bloc of parties that would support him to be prime minister.”

Fellow Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer added that over the past year, “when Netanyahu flies to the United States, it has been to convince President Trump to jump back into the war, and I think that that's probably what he wants to do under the pretense of going to mourn the late Senator Lindsey Graham."

On the podcast, Solomon and Leifer joined host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the rising fortunes of Netanyahu’s opposition and the growing signs of concern in the ruling coalition camp, illustrated by an AI-generated video of rival Gadi Eisenkot featuring an image of his slain son, that was widely condemned as offensive.

The panelists also discussed how escalating settler violence in the West Bank is making the months until the election more volatile and dangerous.

Leifer said that Israelis must “take seriously” statements by Netanyahu’s extremist right-wing partners that “this is the last chance that the settler right is going to have for a long time to stake its claim in the ground and end the possibility of a two-state solution. We should not be naïve about the lengths to which they are willing to go to prevent that possibility from happening."

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