Eager for Political Wins, Trump Was Never Going to Wait Around for Israel

Only last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looked like he was on top of the world.

His stars were aligned, or so it seemed. US President Donald Trump was back in the White House, and he made sure that Netanyahu was the first foreign leader invited to the Oval Office.

During that meeting, Trump indicated that he backed every one of Israel’s goals in the region, and then some. On the day he hosted Netanyahu, he restored the maximum pressure policy against Iran and its nuclear program. He promised to work with Israel “to ensure Hamas is eliminated” — not just pushed out from ruling Gaza. He spoke repeatedly about his desire to broker the Saudi-Israeli normalization deal. He went after the International Criminal Court for targeting Israel’s leaders with arrest warrants.

Netanyahu, it seemed, was finally positioned to ensure Israel’s permanent place in the region, with powerful Arab states as allies and the Iranian axis in disarray, perhaps permanently.

His visit to Hungary in April felt like a victory lap. Minutes before he arrived at Buda Castle to be welcomed by old friend Viktor Orban, Hungary announced it was dropping out of the ICC. At the castle, gloriously moustachioed Hungarian cavalrymen in imperial costume paraded in front of Netanyahu as a military band played Hatikvah.

To top off the triumphal visit, Orban and Netanyahu held a joint phone call with Trump, in what appeared to be the coming out party for an alliance of antiliberal democratic leaders.

Netanyahu would have been better off not making that call.

Trump summoned the Israeli leader on an urgent visit to Washington, ostensibly to sort out the tariffs he had just announced. Believing he knew how to handle the mercurial president — and against the advice of top advisers — Netanyahu decided to continue from Budapest to Washington, solve the tariff issue before any other country, and return for the Passover holiday with another victory in hand.

There was no win to be had. With Netanyahu sitting by his side, Trump dropped three bombshells in the Oval Office. He announced that senior US officials would be holding direct nuclear talks with Iran; he avoided committing to removing the tariffs on Israel; and he heaped praise on Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, perhaps Israel’s leading critic on the world stage.

Since then, the decisions coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Mar-A-Lago have only created more headaches for Netanyahu.

US hostage envoy Adam Boehler conducted secret direct talks with Hamas in March, drawing Israel’s ire, then followed up by stressing that the US is not “an agent of Israel.”

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, engaged in several rounds of nuclear talks with Iran, reportedly on a deal that is largely a rehash of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was strongly opposed by Netanyahu and that Trump scrapped during his first term.

Trump moved his national security adviser Mike Waltz, a staunch Iran hawk, out of the White House, reportedly angered by him coordinating with Netanyahu on military options to destroy Tehran’s nuclear program.

And he is said to be fed up with Netanyahu’s delays on decisions that affect the president’s ability to move forward on his vision for Middle East.

By all appearances, Trump is plowing ahead with his priorities in the region, without Israel.

Two days after a Houthi missile hit Ben Gurion Airport, and without coordinating with Israel or other allies, Trump announced  that he had reached a ceasefire agreement with the Houthis. The agreement did not stop the Iran-backed group from continuing to fire on Israel, and left Jerusalem suddenly alone in the fight against a persistent and hard-to-reach enemy.

His just-completed Middle East trip didn’t include a stop in Israel. Instead, Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed a massive arms deal that, until recently, had been seen as conditioned on Riyadh establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.

Last week, Witkoff negotiated the release of US-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander with Hamas, without involvement from Netanyahu’s government.

Trump also met Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa and lifted sanctions on the country in direct opposition to a request Netanyahu made at the White House. Trump praised the former jihadist leader, calling him a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”

“Trump has utterly changed the rules of engagement,” wrote The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall. “World leaders must learn this – and quickly.”

Netanyahu does not seem to have done so.

It’s not that Trump is suddenly anti-Israel.

“Donald Trump has always been a stalwart friend to Israel, so it’s not fair to question him as if he was Chris Murphy or Rand Paul,” said Danielle Pletka, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, referring to prominent Israel critics in the US Senate.

Even in his first term, during which he pulled out of the JCPOA, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and brokered the Abraham Accords, Trump had core disagreements with Netanyahu.

That is to be expected in his second term as well.

“We forget who this guy is,” said Michael Oren, former ambassador to Washington. “That he was anti-annexation [of the Jordan Valley]. He was against unlimited settlement building, and that he was a two-stater.”

“Trump is being Trump,” said John Hannah, senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) and former national security adviser to US vice president Dick Cheney. “He’s being who he’s always been — highly transactional, zero sentimentality, and always looking out first and foremost for number one.”

What Trump wants right now, Israel — and Netanyahu — isn’t in a position to provide.

The president who promised far-reaching results on day one is still in search of a landmark win. The war in Ukraine drags on, hostages remain in Gaza, and his Liberation Day tariffs fell apart. Domestic consumer confidence is plummeting over inflation fears, and Trump’s approval rating remains underwater.

What’s more, his policies and statements became central issues in elections in Canada and Australia, causing right-wing candidates who would have been valuable allies to collapse in the polls and lose.

Gulf Arab countries, flush with oil and natural gas wealth, are happy to pump billions into the US economy and calm shaky consumer nerves. But Israel isn’t in a position to make massive investments in the US — in fact, it received over $20 billion in aid in the first year of the ongoing war, according to one study.

Trump also wants to show that his penchant for personal diplomacy is paying off, keeping the US out of unnecessary military commitments in the Middle East.

That desire to seal bold diplomatic initiatives is running up against Netanyahu’s “strategy of preserving the status quo to maintain his fragile political coalition,” argued Yisrael Klitsner, fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and former adviser to prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Ministers on the far-right flank of the coalition — and even some Likud ministers — have been calling for a resettlement of Gaza by Israel, and believe that Trump’s plan to move Palestinians out of the Strip should be the extent of Israel’s “day after” plan for the Strip. Critics say Netanyahu is avoiding bringing the war in Gaza to a close in order to stave off making a decision on what comes next, one that could cause his government to fall apart.

“When working closely with Israel can be useful to him achieving his goals, great, Trump will work closely with Israel,” said Hannah. “But if that’s not the case, if Israel is an obstacle to him getting what serves his short-term interests, or he can best get what he needs by flying solo and keeping Israel in the dark, then he’ll do that.”

“Israel is not at the table, because its agenda is completely different from the president’s agenda,” said Eyal Hulata, national security adviser during the previous Bennett/Yair Lapid government. “There’s nothing to be done if it’s more important to Netanyahu to continue the war in Gaza than anything else. This is not Trump’s choice. I know that Trump really meant to promote normalization seriously. But how can you promote normalization when nothing is moving in the region?”

But that’s not the only factor at play. While he surrounded himself with traditional Republican foreign policy hands in 2016, Trump now has a new coterie of advisers around him.

“He’s got a more MAGA-friendly crowd whose only north star is to let Trump be Trump in all his glory,” said Hannah, “and whose first instinct is to super-charge rather than suppress his intuitive transactionalism and predilection for unilateral action.”

What’s more, some of those second-term advisers are not especially well-disposed toward Israel.

Still, even as Trump plows ahead in the Middle East without carefully coordinating with Israel, the country is on the minds of the officials meeting in Riyadh and Dubai.

“Israel’s position is indeed absent from Trump’s current campaign,” noted Meir Ben-Shabbat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former national security adviser. “But everyone remembers that Israel’s achievements throughout the war, even before Trump’s election to the current presidency, paved the way for changing the face of the region.”

The past two months have been a wake-up call for Israel, but if Netanyahu makes the necessary adjustments, the next four years can still be another high-water mark in US-Israel ties.

Jerusalem, first of all, needs to recognize that Trump will continue to occasionally surprise and frustrate his close ally.

“If anyone is really shocked that Trump got tired of fighting the Houthis and cut a separate ceasefire deal as soon as he could claim a nominal success, Israel’s concerns be damned, well, shame on them,” said Hannah. “Ditto if anyone really believed that he’d carefully communicate and coordinate with Israel and fully account for its concerns and interests when a chance arose to make a deal to get an American hostage released or build leverage with his rich and powerful friends in Riyadh and Ankara regarding Syria.”

And even as Sharaa gains legitimacy in the Middle East and the West, Israel would do well to remember that he is unlikely to remain in power for the long term. The brutal 50-year Assad regime was the only period in which Syria wasn’t wracked by repeated coups.

Iran, Syria, and Gaza are all seen by Israel as areas where core national security interests are at stake. They all hold the potential for intense disagreement with the Trump administration, and Israel would be well-served to develop contingency plans for how to protect its interests while maintaining its intimate ties with Washington if friction does emerge.

Moreover, Israel can’t be seen by its enemies as looking to Trump for permission to act. It must show that it has the will and military capabilities to strike Iran and its proxies with or without Washington’s blessing or involvement.

Many of those who signed deals last week are quietly hoping Israel keeps hitting the Iranian axis while they are free to issue statements and ink deals, said Ben-Shabbat: “Trump, as well as his hosts in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, understand that it will not be possible to establish a new regional order without completing the mission of crushing Hamas and destroying its military capabilities.”

No matter what shakes out in the coming years, Israel will find itself better able to manage any surprises if it makes sure that its dialogue with Washington is improved and expanded.

That would include a campaign to establish new understandings with the Democratic party, and with the more isolationist wing of the White House, including Vice President JD Vance.

“The Israelis are a one-man show in Washington, DC,” lamented Pletka. “Everything is about Bibi. If Jerusalem was to professionalize its representation here and seek to overhaul its friend network — including a hard look at [pro-Israel lobby group] AIPAC — that would be a good outcome.”