News Analysis: U.S.-Israel relations to remain strained after Netanyahu's re-election

U.S.-Israel relations are likely to remain strained after Benjamin Netanyahu's electoral win this week, as the Israeli leader and the White House have butted heads for several years now, U.S. experts said.

"I think we can expect continuing friction in U.S.-Israeli relations following these elections, particularly given the comments made by Prime Minister Netanyahu at the final stages of the campaign opposing a Palestinian state," Dalia Dassa Kaye, director at the RAND Corporation's Center for Middle East Public Policy, told Xinhua.

Kaye was referring to Netanyahu's opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian State. He believes that Islamist radicals would use Palestinian territories to launch attacks on Israel.

"This, following the increased politicization of the relationship after Netanyahu's (recent) speech to (the U.S.) Congress earlier this month, does not bode well for an easing of tensions," she said.

The speech was arranged by Republican House Speaker John Boehner without consulting the White House in a break from protocol that irked U.S. President Barack Obama, who boycotted the nationally televised address.

What is troubling is how to support for Netanyahu has become a partisan issue in the U.S., with a win for the Israeli leader viewed as a win for the Republican Party, Kaye said.

"This is not a healthy development for U.S.-Israeli relations over the longer term," she said.

Indeed, there is a fundamental and cavernous gap between how Netanyahu and the White House view troubles in the Middle East and how to solve them.

Obama's White House takes a liberal view of Middle East security issues in which engaging enemies, negotiating differences and diplomatic agreements take a higher priority than defending the security interests of allies, according to experts.

But Netanyahu has a much more conservative view about the need to protect Israeli security interests, said James Phillips, a Middle East expert at Heritage Foundation.

As such, disagreements over how to handle Iran's nuclear program have magnified tensions between the two sides. Phillips added that Netanyahu's government believes Obama is naively seeking a flawed nuclear deal with Iran that would jeopardize Israeli national security interests.

Netanyahu believes Obama prematurely relaxed the sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy and caused its currency to plunge. The hardline leader also criticized Obama's diplomacy for undermining the U.S. bargaining leverage, and is setting the bar too low for a deal by departing from UN Security Council resolutions that called on Iran to halt all uranium enrichment, Phillips said.

Kaye noted that the frustration within the Obama administration toward Netanyahu's positions, both on a potential deal with Iran as well as policies related to the Palestinians, has been brewing for some time.

In his televised speech to U.S. Congress earlier this month, Netanyahu sounded the alarm for his country's survival, blasting the deal Obama is trying to hammer out with Tehran over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

"This is a bad deal -- a very bad deal. We're better off without it," Netanyahu said, adding that the deal will "guarantee" that Iran acquires nuclear weapons. Iran has insisted that its intentions are peaceful, and that its nuclear program is intended to provide cheap energy.

Obama, who told the UN General Assembly 18 months ago that he would seek real breakthroughs on both Iran's nuclear program and Israeli-Palestinian peace, and views Netanyahu as a potential obstacle to his preferred ways of achieving the duel objectives.

Kaye said that while the security and military relationship between the U.S. and Israel is as strong as it's ever been, undoubtedly it has a political crisis.

Still, such crises have been seen in the past, and the U.S.-Israel relations are unlikely to be permanently damaged, she said. Endi