Israel's fractured opposition figures said the US midterm results - a Democratic sweep of Congress - may make it easier to overcome deep internal divisions and form a coalition government against Benjamin Netanyahu, whose decision to side with Donald Trump and the Republicans now looks like a political liability at home.

A break with bipartisan ties

For decades, Israeli governments of every stripe worked to nurture bipartisan support in Washington. According to the report, Netanyahu ripped up that commitment and aligned himself with the Republicans in general and Trump in particular.

That bet was tested on election day itself, when Trump made a last-ditch attempt to woo voters with a pledge to cut off $4bn (£3bn) in annual military aid to Israel. Vice-president JD Vance also put the relationship with Israel on a short list of reasons for voter fury.

Lapid's case for rebuilding bridges

Yair Lapid argued that the incoming Democratic lawmakers are not hostile to Israel itself and that the country should rebuild bridges with them. "These people aren't against Israel," he said, adding that they are mainly against Netanyahu, for whom anything connected is toxic.

Lapid rejected the argument that America is lost, calling it the easiest excuse for inaction - because if America is lost, he said, no one has to work - and insisted that is simply not true.

He proposed a plan to rebuild trust in the United States through a charm offensive by officials of a prospective new government, a proposal that brought an immediate and pointed rebuke from the New York congressman-elect Brad Lander.

Lander's rebuke and the Abu Shehada case

Lander, a Jewish Democrat who describes himself as a liberal Zionist, was detained in the occupied West Bank last month while joining Palestinians trying to harvest olives.

In a direct response to Lapid, he said American voters, Jewish and non-Jewish, are looking for something other than a public-relations tour:

Lander highlighted the arrest of Abed Abu Shehada, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who works as a journalist, and linked it to what he called a regime of detention without charges, based on secret evidence, designed to intimidate and chill speech - practices he said US voters rejected.

His lawyers gave this account of how the arrest unfolded:

• •Late at night, 15 masked security officials arrived and removed Abu Shehada from his home, his lawyers said, reportedly without an arrest warrant
• •According to those lawyers, the questioning touched on a single subject: a podcast interview he had conducted with a public figure

On Friday, Lander joined Daniel Bliss and Scott Wiener in writing to Israel's ambassador to the US to call for Abu Shehada's immediate release. "Detaining a reporter for conducting an interview ... is a violation of international law," Lander said.

Panic over aid and a cracked consensus

The aid-cut pledge caused alarm inside Israel's defence establishment. An Israeli defence official told Channel 12 news: "Where are we going to come up with 15 billion shekels every year, and what does that mean for Israel's future defence budget?"

Netanyahu responded on Friday with a statement from his office saying the shift away from US aid reflected Israel's economic strength and demonstrated a "move from aid to partnership".

Columnist Ben Caspit was far blunter in Ma'ariv, writing that one thing is clear: Israel is losing America. He called it an avalanche and a collapse of the foundation of Israel's national defence doctrine - one he laid at Netanyahu's door.

Any push to unseat Netanyahu still faces an obstacle inside the Knesset. Opposition parties won 67 of the chamber's 120 seats, yet Palestinian citizens of Israel hold more than a quarter of those, and some Jewish Israeli opposition parties have refused to sit alongside them in any coalition.

Whether the new Congress turns hostile is another open question. In the Times of Israel, Nadav Tamir - once a senior Israeli diplomat posted to the US and now head of J Street Israel - argued that the bipartisan consensus on Israel is cracking, but that the majority of lawmakers from both parties still see Israel as a key US ally in the Middle East.

Tamir went further, suggesting that support not tied to automatic alignment with every government policy might prove more durable. "Perhaps this will be the paradox of the new [US] Congress," he wrote - that it offers Israel more meaningful support precisely by not defining backing as unconditional.

The facts end there: Netanyahu's office described the shift as a "move from aid to partnership", while Tamir suggested the new Congress may offer Israel more meaningful support by not defining backing as automatic alignment.