Set for US trip, Netanyahu faces tough sledding as Trump cools on aggressive stance

It appears that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is headed back to the US this month for his fifth visit since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, and his first since the ceasefire went into effect in Gaza.

Trump himself hasn’t confirmed the trip or even the invitation. But Netanyahu’s office put out a statement this week saying the president invited Netanyahu back to the US “in the near future,” and an Israeli official told The Times of Israel that the trip would likely come days after the Christmas holiday, potentially at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The mood was certainly festive the last time they met — in Israel on October 13, hours before the Simchat Torah holiday. A ceasefire had taken hold in Gaza, all 20 living hostages were back in Israel, and Middle Eastern leaders had banded together to back Trump’s plan to disarm and remove Hamas.

It was “not only the end of war, but the end of an age of terror and death and the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God,” said Trump in a raucous Knesset address that often veered into exuberant improvised levity.

But as Netanyahu makes plans to head back to the US, the mood has shifted and the premier’s standing has been dented.

Netanyahu’s five previous meetings with Trump this year (four in the US; and the extraordinary October 13 day in Israel), along with countless phone calls, have been aimed at keeping Israel’s concerns and insights at the center of Trump’s foreign policy decision-making.

In recent weeks, however, there are signs that Trump’s vision for the region is aligning less with Netanyahu’s.

It’s always good to be the last person to have Trump’s ear, and Netanyahu hasn’t had it for what amounts to a long time in the furious pace of Trump diplomacy, with other Middle East leaders now at the top of Trump’s list.

Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, whom Israel still views with abundant suspicion, had a very friendly visit last month, and Trump has already chided Israel over its moves in the neighboring country.

Soon after, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made a triumphant return to the White House to take his place as the leader most aligned with Trump’s focus on de-escalation, diplomacy, trade and investment, winning concessions previously thought tied to normalization with Israel.

Instead of Israel’s conflicts, pressing global issues such as the war between Russia and Ukraine and escalating tensions with Venezuela seem to be taking the lion’s share of Trump’s attention.

In Gaza, Lebanon and beyond, Trump wants an end to fighting. But Netanyahu sees the enemies that Israel battered over the past two years preparing the ground for recovery, and agreements that promised terror groups’ disarmament looking more and more like previous accords that meant little on the ground.

If the prime minister does indeed manage to make the trip during the Christmas break in the US, he will be coming with a wish list seeking US support for moves on all the fronts Israel has been fighting on. To get what he wants during the holiday season, however, he’ll have to show Trump that he’s willing to play nice, at least for the time being.

Fight to clear arms

According to Trump’s 20-point vision for Gaza, Hamas has to disarm and step away from power, but that looks increasingly unlikely.

The terror group says quite clearly that it won’t give up its weapons, and more subtly that any international force in Gaza could be targeted: “Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation.”

Though Trump might want to pretend otherwise, Hamas has never signed onto disarming or any element of the second phase of Trump’s plan, which would hand the Strip over to non-Hamas technocrats and demilitarize the territory.

If Hamas does maintain its weapons, Gaza will remain a war zone; Israel is determined to prevent reconstruction from taking place in parts of Gaza that Hamas controls.

That doesn’t necessarily worry Hamas all that much. The terror group is playing for time, working to deepen its hold over Gaza’s population and waiting until the world gets used to the idea that it still rules the Strip.

Israel would like to avoid allowing the situation to return to a modified version of October 6, 2023, with Hamas maintaining control of land and a population, while IDF troops guard a defensive line but refrain from actions beyond airstrikes or the odd raid that does little to change the strategic balance.

Doing so will mean getting Trump to focus his energy on pushing disarmament ahead — instead of making do with vague mandates for an international force — or getting his okay to shelve or modify his ballyhooed Gaza peace plan in favor of  a return to fighting. Trump can set a firm timeline for Hamas as he did with Iran earlier this year, or push Turkey and Qatar to prevent a return to war by using their ties with Hamas to force the group to disarm.

Trump’s lofty vision is running up against the hard reality on the ground because there wasn’t time to prepare a detailed program to remove Hamas and rebuild Gaza. Middle Eastern leaders rushed to Trump after Israel’s September strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, asking him to bring the fighting in Gaza to a close.

Trump did so immediately, but since then, preparations for the future of Gaza are being done on the fly, and regional allies expected to do the heavy lifting on the ground no longer seem like a promising bet.

That includes Turkey, which moved into a central role in Trump’s Middle East diplomacy by successfully facilitating Hamas’s release of US citizen Edan Alexander in May as a favor to Trump. Turkish intelligence has an excellent network in the Middle East, and has plenty of leverage over Hamas. It hosts Hamas officials in Istanbul, and wields significant soft power in Palestinian society.

But Turkey is being frozen out of Gaza’s future by Israel, which is adamant that no Turkish troops be allowed into the Strip because of Ankara’s relentless hostility in recent years.

For now, Turkey isn’t doing much to pressure Hamas to disarm. There are quiet efforts underway to reopen multiple channels of communication between Ankara and Jerusalem, so there might be some room down the line for a modest Turkish role. But Turkey isn’t going to be the answer to the Hamas problem.

Qatar has proven its worth to Trump as a mediator, and its guiding interest is doing whatever is necessary to preserve its relationship with the US. Doha will only put enough pressure on Hamas to maintain its position in Trump’s eyes.

Egypt is Israel’s most trusted regional mediator, and it wants to see the rebuilding of Gaza begin so that it can profit from the billions of dollars of contracts that will be doled out. But, uniquely among the mediators, it wants to see an international force in place and Israel withdrawn to a buffer zone first.

The International Stabilization Force has the UN Security Council’s authorization, but little else. Its precise mission is unclear, and no one wants to send troops to risk confrontation with Hamas.

Indonesia says it has trained up to 20,000 troops for the force, but only to take on health and construction-related tasks.

The north rises again

The ceasefire in Lebanon looks even more precarious than the one in Gaza. Jerusalem and Washington have been warning for weeks that the Israel Defense Forces would intensify its air campaign — or worse — if Lebanon did not move much more quickly to disarm Hezbollah. Last week, Israel took out Hezbollah’s chief of staff Haytham Ali Tabatabai in Beirut in a significant escalation.

While there are significant gaps between Israel and the US on Gaza, on Lebanon there is more consensus between the allies. They both recognize that the deterrent effects of Hezbollah’s military defeat last year are starting to wear off, and that if another war is to be avoided, both Lebanon’s government and Hezbollah need to take the possibility of a significant Israeli military operation seriously.

Now that Pope Leo XIV’s trip to Lebanon is in the past, the chances for an Israeli operation have risen. It is building its case for an operation, and reportedly presented White House envoy Morgan Ortagus with intelligence it says proves Hezbollah is rebuilding and rearming in southern Lebanon, and that the Lebanese Armed Forces is either unable or unwilling to curb the group’s violations.

Yet there are signs that US pressure is moderating Israel’s response there. After the meeting with Ortagus, Netanyahu sent a senior security official to Lebanon to meet with Lebanese officials alongside the US envoy for the first direct talks between the countries in decades.

Netanyahu’s office said that the meeting was held “in a positive spirit,” and another meeting is reportedly in the works.

But positive incentives like a more constructive relationship with Israel will not be enough to push the Lebanese government — which wants to see Hezbollah gone — to risk a fight with the powerful Shiite army by pushing its disarmament plan. Continued messages are needed from the US that Israel will be free to launch another operation against Hezbollah if disarmament doesn’t proceed apace.

Even that might not be enough to head off a confrontation.

Syria is the front without any ceasefire, even on paper, but progress there is conceivable with urging from Trump.

The Sharaa government itself has shown no interest in fighting with Israel and plenty of interest in reaching a security agreement.

Israel has shown a preference for coercing Syria to meet its sometimes illogical demands about keeping troops away from southern Syria while preventing any attacks on Israel from there.

Trump isn’t happy about Israel’s pugnaciousness there. Shortly before speaking with Netanyahu, the US president wrote on Truth Social, “It is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria, and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State.”

During their call on Monday night, Trump reportedly voiced clear opposition to continued Israeli operations there, telling Netanyahu to “take it easy” and avoid actions that could provoke the country’s new leadership.

Netanyahu changed his tone. On Tuesday, he said in a statement that “it is… possible to reach an agreement with the Syrians.”

Pardon interruption

In recent weeks, the flow of senior officials visiting the Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat dried up, and the White House has focused on peace efforts in Ukraine and a potential military conflict with Venezuela.

Netanyahu’s invitation — which the White House has yet to confirm — shows that Trump’s attention has not shifted too far away from the region.

There is plenty on his plate, but Trump still believes in his grand vision for a transformed Middle East, with the entire pro-Western bloc normalized with Israel and the dawn of a new era of peace and prosperity.

For that vision to happen, in Trump’s eyes, Netanyahu has to stay in power and be free to focus on doing what is necessary to clear the path for the second phase to move forward in Gaza, an agreement to be signed with Sharaa, and normalization to be reached with Saudi Arabia’s MBS.

Netanyahu’s presidential pardon has thus been a priority for Trump, who took the unprecedented step of publicly asking President Isaac Herzog to grant it.

Netanyahu is sure to use the White House visit as an opportunity to enlist further help from Trump, who seems cautious about applying even more pressure on Herzog.

He will also make the case for a more aggressive approach to Hamas and Hezbollah, and more guarantees in case Sharaa isn’t the transformative figure that Trump wants him to be.

However, Trump could use the meeting to push Netanyahu to make concessions on Syria or even Gaza in exchange for help in getting the pardon — putting the prime minister in the position of choosing between his own political interests and the country’s national security interests.

While Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria move in and out of headlines, Iran remains a dangerous enemy, and one where coordination with the US may not just be a want, but a need.

Tehran was bloodied by Israel and the US in June, but isn’t simply licking its wounds. It promises to rebuild its nuclear facilities, maintains a stockpile of enriched uranium, and is reportedly racing to build thousands more ballistic missiles.

Trump promises peace and prosperity, and Netanyahu promises security.

To have a chance at reaching next Christmas with significant progress on any of those priorities, peace-pushing Trump and security-set Netanyahu will have to get back to a common vision. As regards the threats that Netanyahu is focused on, and the opportunities that Trump insists he can deliver.