As Netanyahu Heads to Washington, Trump Is Already a Close Ally

Before President Barack Obama was sworn into office in 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu called the Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas out of the blue and asked for a lesson in what was essentially a foreign tongue: the language of Democrats.

“I speak Republican and you speak Democratic, and I need the intermediary,” said Mr. Netanyahu, who was about to become prime minister of Israel, according to Mr. Pinkas. He added: “Netanyahu always thought of himself as some pedigree neocon that belongs in the right wing of the Republican Party.”

Mr. Netanyahu, who will meet with President Trump at the White House on Monday, is once again conversing with his preferred party, and the difference has been stark.

Where former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had sought to put some restrictions on Mr. Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza, the Trump administration has made no such demand. Where Mr. Biden criticized Mr. Netanyahu’s attempted overhaul of Israel’s courts, Mr. Trump has made attacks of his own against American judges.

“They are unshackled,” said Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy and a senior fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution. “A lot of concerns that the previous White House kept making about humanitarian aid, about limiting civilian casualties, these concerns are just not voiced anymore.”

Looming over the meeting this week is a point of tension: Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which did not spare Israel. Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the two men plan to discuss the tariff issue, the war in Gaza, Israel-Turkey relations, Iran and the International Criminal Court.