UN Security Council
UN Security CouncilReuters

The United States is seriously considering “dumping” Israel as an ally, at least in international institutions such as the United Nations, according to sources quoted on the Politico web site.

Taken aback by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's victory in Tuesday's elections, officials in President Barack Obama's administration are focusing on Netanyahu's recanting of his Bar Ilan speech, in which he expressed support for the two-state solution.

"The positions taken by the prime minister in the last days of the campaign have raised very significant substantive questions that go far beyond just optics,” a senior American official was quoted by Politico as saying.“We are signaling that if the Israeli government’s position is no longer to pursue a Palestinian state, we’re going to have to broaden the spectrum of options we pursue going forward."

With foreign aide for Israel controlled by a friendly Congress, it's unlikely that the U.S. would cut assistance for Israel.

However, foreign policy regarding international institutions is in the purview of the State Department, which is far less amenable to Israel than the Republican-controlled House and Senate, the report said. The administration could express its dissatisfaction with the democratic choice of the Israeli people, for example, by failing to veto an anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution. 

According to Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the left-leaning pro-Israel group J Street, “I do think the administration is going to look very closely at the possibility of either joining, or at least not blocking an internationally backed move at the U.N. to restate the parameters for ending the conflict.”

Netanyahu's latest statements, he told Politico, “make it a lot easier for the administration to justify going down a more international route.”