President Barack Obama’s first six years in the White House were marked by personal strain between him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and disagreements between them on key issues, above all the Israeli-Palestinian political process and the Iranian nuclear issue. While the two leaders have met many times, sharp disagreements have continued to cloud their relations. The coming two years will severely test the relations between the two leaders and US-Israel bilateral relations, due to the complexity of the issues on the agenda and the results of the recent American elections, which gave the Republican Party control of both houses of Congress. A full-blown confrontation between a Congress controlled by one party and a president from the other party usually has negative internal consequences, with the president deemed a lame duck during the two remaining years of his term. This article, however, examines how the expected tension between Congress and the President will affect Israel.
