Hailing Syria, arming Saudis, dealing with Iran and Houthis, Trump relegates Israeli concerns
The US president is making a slew of deals, decisions and alliances central to the daily well-being and geostrategic future of a marginalized Israel. Gaza could be next
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
An earlier version of this Editor’s Note was sent out Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
Nobody had doubted US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff’s immense personal commitment to securing the release of all the hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza.
But he has proved it multiple times in the past few days. He oversaw the indirect contacts with Hamas that secured the release of the last living hostage with American citizenship, 21-year-old IDF soldier Edan Alexander. He flew to Israel to greet Alexander on his release on Monday, went to visit him and his family in the hospital on Tuesday, and put him on the phone with US President Donald Trump in Riyadh and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Extraordinarily, he gave Alexander the Star of David necklace that his own son Andrew used to wear before his tragic death in 2011 and that he has reportedly worn himself ever since, and told the freed hostage that he “would be doing a great honor to my son if you keep wearing this.”
He and Trump’s hostages envoy Adam Boehler then spent over an hour and a half meeting with families of the remaining 58 hostages still held by Hamas, reiterating the Trump administration’s commitment to getting them all freed. Relative after relative emerged from the meeting with a little of their 586 days of agony eased. “It was a calming meeting,” Meirav Gilboa-Dalal, whose son Guy is among the living hostages, said on Wednesday morning. “We met a man who understands our pain.”
In an audio clip from the meeting, Witkoff can be heard saying that if he cannot facilitate a diplomatic solution to the hostage crisis, “it will be one of the worst failures that I can ever endure in my life.”
Witkoff is in Doha right now attempting to arrange precisely such a solution, on behalf of a president who keeps restating that the US is determined to secure the release of all the hostages. Netanyahu has dispatched a delegation, too, but reportedly with little room for maneuver in negotiations. The prime minister said on Tuesday that were Hamas to offer “to release 10 more” living hostages, that would be “fine. We’ll take them… But there will be no situation where we stop the war.
“A temporary ceasefire — fine. But we’re going all the way,” he stressed. “In the coming days, we’ll go in with full force to complete the operation. Completing the operation means subduing Hamas. It means destroying Hamas.”
Witkoff on Tuesday hailed Netanyahu’s crucial role in the process that enabled Alexander’s release, assuring the prime minister in a phone conversation that the way he “allowed the negotiations to operate” was “in large part the reason that Edan is home with his family today.” And while Trump has been saying he is working to get the Gaza war ended “as quickly as possible,” he has reportedly not been directly pressing Netanyahu to do so in order to secure the freedom of the remaining hostages — a Hamas condition that Netanyahu has repeatedly made clear he will not accept, because it would mean Hamas surviving, rebuilding, and preparing to attack again.
But the US president, as he is proving almost minute by minute in his current fast-paced Middle East trip, is an insistent deal-maker. And whether he’s still broadly empathetic to Netanyahu’s concerns or not particularly bothered by some of them, he’s moving ahead on a whole range of vital regional issues without including Israel on his regional itinerary, without arranging for an Israeli presence at his critical meetings, and without heeding Israeli concerns in an expanding number of his agreements.
Deals that Israel needed to influence
Before setting out on his trip, Trump signed a truce with the Houthis two days after they launched a missile that struck Ben Gurion Airport, prompting foreign airlines to flee.
He dramatically deepened US-Saudi relations, with Israel out of the loop — telling Saudi leaders on Tuesday that while it is his dream for them to join the Abraham Accords with Israel, “you’ll do it in your own time.” Left unspoken was his recognition that Saudi Arabia will not normalize ties with an Israeli government, under Netanyahu, that refuses to set out even a theoretical pathway to Palestinian statehood.
He signed an unprecedentedly large arms deal with Riyadh, worth some $142 billion, doubtless to Jerusalem’s dismay (especially if Israel’s air supremacy is undermined). And he is reportedly discussing a deal regarding the Saudis’ desire for a civil nuclear program, which opposition leader Yair Lapid warned on Wednesday would trigger a Middle East nuclear race.
He is determined to seal a deal with Iran that, given the US zig-zagging on whether this will require the destruction of all of the regime’s nuclear facilities, has Jerusalem in panic mode.
Over objections from Jerusalem, he’s lifted all sanctions on a Syrian leadership that Israel understandably regards as a terrorist regime unless or until proven otherwise, and asked President Ahmed al-Sharaa to normalize relations with Israel and join the Abraham Accords.
As I write, he’s just arrived in Qatar, the Hamas-funding, Hamas-hosting mediator that’s allegedly been paying some of Netanyahu’s aides to lobby on its behalf, and that Trump has insisted is “absolutely trying to help” resolve the hostage-war crisis.
Every one of these moves has vast implications for Israeli security, economy and the daily well-being of its people. Any Israeli government would have tried to influence and amend Trump’s rapid deal-making steps toward the Houthis, the Syrians, the Saudis and the Iranians. But Israel has been largely marginalized as Trump has advanced them.
Saudi crown prince as America’s strongest partner
It was being speculated in Jerusalem on Tuesday evening that Trump is angry with Netanyahu for having sought to push him toward a military strike on Iran, when he has been advocating diplomacy. It was also being suggested that Trump has concluded that Israel is simply no longer as central to American interests in the region.
Opposition leader Lapid argued that Netanyahu had denied Israel a seat in Riyadh because of the far-right-driven policies of his coalition. “Netanyahu had two options,” said Lapid on Wednesday afternoon. “Either to do something in Khan Younis for the sixth time, or to be in Riyadh — to sit at the head of a table in Saudi Arabia and be part of agreements on a scale we’ve never known, bringing historic change to the Middle East. And he chose a military operation in Khan Younis” — targeting Hamas’s Gaza leader Mohammad Sinwar.
“I’m in favor of eliminating the leaders of Hamas,” Lapid went on, referring to Tuesday’s IDF strike, “but for the national interest, we had to be in Saudi Arabia. And we’re not in Saudi Arabia because [Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners Bezalel] Smotrich and [Itamar] Ben Gvir won’t allow it. (The two party leaders insisted on March’s return to war in Gaza, after only the first of the three envisaged phases of the hostage-ceasefire deal finalized by Witkoff in January, and they are even more adamant than Netanyahu in their opposition to any notion of Palestinian statehood.) Said Lapid: “This is causing harm for generations and harm to our relations with the Americans.”
For now, with Trump and Netanyahu’s Israel, it appears to be less a case of “he’s not that into you,” and more a case of “I’m moving ahead, with or without you.” With this trip, Trump is soaringly elevating the Gulf states, and that, by definition, means Israel’s regional importance is reduced in the president’s considerations.
“The transformation that has occurred under the leadership of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed [Bin Salman] has been truly extraordinary,” the president enthused of Saudi Arabia in his main address on Tuesday night, calling the crown prince the US’s strongest partner. “We have great partners in the world, but we have none stronger and nobody like the gentleman that’s right before me,” Trump said of Bin Salman, looking at the crown prince. “He’s your greatest representative… I like him too much… Great guy.”
Implicit in Trump’s admiration for progress in the Gulf is a demotion of Israel as the go-to regional cutting-edge powerhouse, the prime innovator, the tech pioneer, the smart destination for investment. Right now, you can barely even fly here.
Not at the table
It is not clear how all this will affect Steve Witkoff’s efforts in Doha. Gilboa-Delal said Wednesday that the envoy told the families the US can’t decide for Israel on the terms it will accept to bring back hostages. But the US president has untold military, diplomatic and economic leverage he can bring to bear should he choose to.
The fact is that Trump is forging ahead with a whole slew of deals and alliances radically impacting Israel — and in so doing, he is already determining core aspects of Israel’s security and geopolitical future.
He said on the plane to Qatar that the US having good ties with the Gulf states “is very good for Israel.” Potentially, that is true, but only if the Israeli leadership proves capable of utilizing those ties. The longer Israel is not seated at the main table alongside the US president, metaphorically and literally, the narrower Israel’s room for maneuver.
The Times of Israel Community.