As Spain’s Pedro Sánchez takes a markedly different path on Gaza, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu head towards elections burdened by war, scandal and deep questions about democratic accountability.
At September’s UN General Assembly, Spain had the intestinal fortitude to criticise President Trump’s US and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Israel. Australia and most other Western delegations did not.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez left no doubt which ‘reactionary power’ had ‘selfish, ignorant and cruel’ forces and unilateralist, far-right politics. He explicitly blamed the other one, Israel, for continuing to perpetrate genocide in Gaza. This year the US and Israel were more isolated than ever among the UNGA’s 193 member states, many of whose delegations walked out rather than listen to Netanyahu.
Sánchez highlighted Spain’s implementation of an arms embargo on Israel, which Australia did not, because we haven’t imposed one. He and Prime Minister Albanese both called for reform of the UN, but the Australian delegation didn’t go so far as to urge the expulsion of Israel from the UN or the abolition of the veto power, because the US repeatedly uses it in the Security Council to support its apartheid-wielding ally, Penny Wong’s ‘forever friend’.
Now, Sánchez has called an early election in both houses of Spain’s parliament, with housing the central issue, along with the cost of living, the economic impact of the war against Iran, recent environmental disasters, the Ceuta migrant crisis, and scandals involving his party members. If he loses on 29 November, no European government that supports the Palestinians will be left.
In the US and Israel, parties of both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu will soon face the voters in a legislative election for the Knesset on 27 October, and in the US congressional mid-term election on 3 November, when both may dispute results they don’t like. The US claims to be the leader of the ‘free world’ and Israel calls itself the only democracy in the Middle East, while manipulating democracy in their self-interest (nor are they alone).
But Trump and Netanyahu have much more riding on this than disregard for their nations’ psephological processes. Both have lost voters’ support, both have led their nations into the latest disastrous wars in 2025 and 2026, both were complicit in successive assassinations of prominent Iranians including the Ayatollah Khamenei, and one is accused of war crimes while the other should be. In a different political system, both would be accused of being liars, propagandists, and self-enriching kakistocrats.
Trump’s approval ratings have fallen to a record-breaking low of 37 per cent. He is widely perceived as a narcissist, a demagogue, a fascist, and a willing aggressor in Iran and Venezuela, serving Israel’s interests and US aims for military dominance and oil exploitation. He has depleted American resources, added to the national debt, and revealed the US – yet again – to be an imperialist state, bent on resource acquisition and political control. Trump’s vainglorious enthusiasm for the ‘Board of Peace’ in Gaza endorsed Israeli right-wing and settler-colonial ambitions. He led the US and the world into a political, economic, and strategic dead-end in the Gulf, and then in the Red Sea.
Netanyahu faces criminal charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in separate legal matters over six years. He was accused in November 2024 of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) which issued an arrest warrant for him. He and his family are accused of receiving luxury gifts such as expensive cigars, champagne, and jewellery worth over $230,000, from wealthy businessmen (including Australian billionaire James Packer) in exchange for political favours. The trial is further delayed by the current war against Iran. Sordid as the case is, voters have other questions for Netanyahu before 27 October.
One is about the ‘submarine affair’ that Israel negotiated with Germany from 2006 to 2016 to buy submarines and other naval vessels, before Netanyahu called the deal off. He and four senior officials were warned by a commission of inquiry set up in 2022 that Israel’s national security and foreign relations were endangered as a result. Even though Germany had secretly funded Israel’s nuclear weapons program for 12 years from the 1960s, some EU countries are now restricting naval supplies to Israel, further impeding the build-up of its navy. Accused in 2024 of a deep and systematic failure in government decision-making and military force-building by the commission of inquiry, the officials called multiple witnesses for their defence in another apparent effort to delay the conclusions, at least until after the October election.
Another unresolved issue concerns what Netanyahu knew, when he knew it, and what he did about two national disasters. In the first, 45 people were killed in a crowd crush when a bridge collapsed at the Lag Ba’omer celebration near Mount Meron in 2021. The second is the much worse event on 7 October 2023, which early reports suggested Netanyahu knew about in advance but let the Hamas outbreak from Gaza go ahead. He was warned in June 2023 by Egypt’s intelligence chief, and twice more, the Wall Street Journal reported, about what Hamas was planning. Only days before the outbreak, Netanyahu diverted the IDF from Gaza to the West Bank. According to Haaretz, Netanyahu has recently visited the UAE’s President Mohamed bin Zayed, asking for ‘moral support’ to deny reports that he had advance knowledge and did nothing.
With the unresolved events of 9/11 in the world’s mind after 25 years, we can also expect a deluge of commentary about 7 October. The two events were traumatic for Americans, Israelis, and all others involved, who until each attack happened could not have imagined they would suffer retaliation for their governments’ own past acts. President Bush’s response to 9/11 was the ‘war on terror’ – the US ‘forever war’ against terrorists anywhere. Netanyahu’s response was to turn that war to Israel’s advantage by seizing more territory of its neighbours and assassinating their leaders. After 7 October, the IDF began destroying Gaza, and merging its military with that of the US to wage war on Iran.
What is allowed to happen before the elections in both the US and Israel will have less impact than what should happen afterwards to their two leaders. That is unlikely to compare with what ICE agents are doing to Americans or the IDF to Palestinians, or what Trump and Netanyahu are threatening to do to Iran.
Dr Alison Broinowski AM is a former Australian diplomat and a member of Australians fr War Powers Reform