Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and one of the shrewdest political tacticians on the face of the planet, was supposed to be a dead-man walking during this election cycle.

Those prognostications, however, didn’t hold up. Netanyahu bit the bullet and survived. With the votes counted, the PM’s bloc has lost its majority but still bested Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc by five seats. With both short of the 61 needed for a majority in the Knesset, the two will spend their weeks trying to build a durable coalition.

But the election’s outcome is only one part of the story. Regardless of who has the privilege of sitting in the big chair, Israel’s relationship with the United States won’t be smooth sailing for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. The so-called “special relationship”, where both sides took pains to show zero daylight between their respective foreign policy positions, is increasingly difficult to paper over.

The war in Iran is a case in point. The conflict, soon to enter its ninth month, remains at a standstill as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps escalates its attacks on vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz and Washington maintains its blockade of Iranian ports.

Despite Trump’s threats of renewing the bombing campaign, there seems to be a growing acknowledgement in the White House that the Iran problem can’t be resolved militarily. Vice-president JD Vance reportedly sent a letter to Iran’s hardliners last week in a bid to explore whether diplomacy could be resurrected. Washington’s goals remain unchanged Iran must negotiate over its nuclear programme, re-open the Strait and stop menacing its neighbours with missile and drone attacks.

Israel, though, is notably more expansive with its objectives. A week before the Israeli elections, Netanyahu reiterated that anything short of the Iranian regime’s downfall was unacceptable. He tried to persuade Trump to renew bombing before the Israeli elections; Trump didn’t bite. Eisenkot is notably less interested in regime change than Netanyahu is, but has still given a full-throated endorsement of airstrikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity.

If Trump eventually comes to the conclusion that dragging out the war will simply add to the pain Americans are already feeling in their wallets, he will have to confront a future Israeli government that is highly sceptical that diplomacy with Iran will work.

Gaza is another source of irritation. This may seem odd at first glance. The US and Israel both have the same objective: ending Hamas’s nearly two decades of power there. But that’s where the similarities end. Washington has largely chosen to accomplish the goal, through its October 2025 peace plan, a step-by-step process whereby Hamas gives up its weapons in return for a phased Israeli troop withdrawal and the beginning of reconstruction in the enclave.

Yet Israeli officials have a cynical view of Trump’s peace plan. Netanyahu himself has stated his outright rejection of some of the terms. Israel is refusing to re-deploy its forces until Hamas gives up its weapons in totality. In fact, Israeli troops have brought more territory under their control, the precise opposite of what Washington ostensibly wants to see. The diplomatic process is stalled, with airstrikes continuing on a regular basis, the technocratic Palestinian administration blocked from entering Gaza and international troops no closer to deploying than they were earlier in the year.

An Eisenkot government might not change that much either; the Israeli public isn’t all that confident about Trump’s peace proposal anyway, with 58 per cent in one poll believing the agreement won’t be implemented. Trump, who’s desperate for a diplomatic win and has held up his Board of Peace initiative as a legacy item, might feel compelled to force the issue.

US and Israeli policy on Syria is one more inflection point. Israeli troops still occupy a small swath of Syrian soil along parts of the Israel-Syria border, arguing that buffer-zones are now essential to the country’s security.

But this goes against US policy, which centres on developing a new relationship with the Syrian government of Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former jihadist who earned Trump’s affection after deposing Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Sharaa has lobbied Trump for the removal of Israeli forces from Syrian territory and brought up the subject during his own discussions with the Israeli government. Trump told Netanyahu to withdraw Israeli troops over the summer which didn’t happen. He’s likely to return to the issue in the months ahead. A major Israeli-Syrian normalisation deal won’t proceed otherwise.

For Israel, determining who the next prime minister is will only be half the battle. Managing relations with its most important partner is where the real work begins.