His first term was remarkable for Israel from the start. What is Trump up to this time?
Direct talks with Hamas, confused dealings with Iran, an unworkable vision for Gaza and now an agreement with the Houthis, all uncoordinated with Netanyahu. Without evident influence, Israel can only hope there is much yet to be revealed
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).
This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier 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.
On his first trip to our immediate neighborhood as US president, in June 2009, Barack Obama flew to Cairo and delivered an outreach speech to the Muslim world in which he related to Israel largely in the context of the Holocaust and made no mention of sovereign Jewish history in the Holy Land. He flew home without so much as a stopover in Israel, the United States’ one and only democratic, ultra-dependable ally in this part of the world.
By contrast, Donald Trump, in his first visit anywhere overseas as president, spent two days in Israel in May 2017, stood with his head bowed at the Western Wall and highlighted what he said was his “privilege” to address the people of Israel in the ancient city of Jerusalem. “I make this promise to you,” he declared in the final public event of his visit, at the Israel Museum, “my administration will always stand with Israel.”
“Iran’s leaders routinely call for Israel’s destruction,” Trump noted bitterly in that same speech, and then departed from the prepared text on the teleprompters to vow: “Not with Donald J Trump, believe me!” His audience, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stood and cheered. “Thank you,” he said three times, as the applause went on and on. And when it had finally faded, he waved out a hand and said, with a smile, “I like you too.” The room filled with a warm, appreciative rumble of laughter.
Flash forward eight years, Trump is back in the White House and is about to make his first trip to the region since reelection. As in 2017, he will be going to Saudi Arabia. Unlike in 2017, he said on Tuesday that he would not be visiting Israel this time.
He may yet change his mind. The “very, very big announcement” he is teasing ahead of his departure could remake any understanding of what he is planning and doing in this region. But for Israel, from a president with a proven first-term record of dramatic pro-Israel action — recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy here, brokering the Abraham Accords, and withdrawing from the Obama-led, terribly flawed 2015 JCPOA agreement on Iran’s nuclear program — the words and deeds in these first 100-plus days are increasingly worrying.
Without informing Israel in advance, he opened direct talks with Hamas, via an emissary, Adam Boehler, who plainly did not recognize Hamas’s eliminate-Israel raison d’être, overseen by his most important foreign policy envoy, Steve Witkoff, who also thinks Hamas is not “ideologically intractable.”
Springing the news on Netanyahu just before telling the rest of the world, with a helpless prime minister at his side in the Oval Office, he initiated talks with Iran, again with Witkoff in the leading role. And he and his key officials have spent the past month flipping back and forth on whether a deal that he says “is going to happen” will require the cessation of all Iranian uranium enrichment… or not, and will entail the dismantling of all Iran’s nuclear facilities… or not. Meaning, it will actually prevent a regime dead-set on attaining a nuclear weapons arsenal from achieving that goal, with Israel its prime target… or not.
Apparently without significant consultation with Netanyahu, he had previously unveiled a bizarre vision for taking over and leveling Gaza, and turning it into a Middle East real estate “riviera” development project, shifting characteristically again on whether this would involve the forced expulsion of all Gazans, and offering no credible mechanism for distinguishing between the “wonderful” non-Hamas Gazans he would rehouse who-knows-where and the inhumane Hamas Gazans who would need to be eliminated.
And then on Tuesday, two days after Yemen’s Houthi terror group breached Israel’s usually effective air defenses and fired a ballistic missile into the grounds of Ben Gurion Airport, a few hundred yards from the main control tower — prompting almost every international airline to cancel their flights to and from our beleaguered little country — he announced that he had reached an agreement with the Houthis under which the US would no longer be targeting their assets.
Astonishingly, again, he did not forewarn Israel — a country whose own airlines are now its only dependable connection to the rest of the world, as a direct consequence of the malevolent activities of a terror group he has now let off the hook. If the president made an effort to require that the Houthis stop targeting Israel as part of his deal with them, he evidently did not insist upon it, since the Houthis followed his latest bombshell-for-Israel announcement by stating that they would indeed continue to attack us and, indeed, fired a drone in our direction on Wednesday morning.
Were it not for that dramatically Israel-supportive first term — not just rhetoric, but demonstrative, incredibly far-reaching action — you might be forgiven for wondering whether Trump had taken office at strategic odds with Israel, or at least fairly indifferent to Israel, perhaps in the grip of the personal anti-Netanyahu animus that was so evident when he declared “Fuck him,” in comments published in January 2021, because the prime minister had ostensibly been too quick to congratulate Joe Biden on winning the 2020 presidential elections.
Trump came into office, this time around, promising to stop wars and to put America first. The first of those goals, if achievable, is entirely laudable and hugely beneficial to humankind. And every nation’s leader has a primary obligation to look first to his or her country’s interests. But you cannot partially stop wars, or cut deals with enemy nations, solely on the basis of your country’s self-interest, least of all when you’re the head of a global superpower and your presidential role includes leadership of the free world. That would constitute the abandonment of your allies and only a fleeting victory for America’s own interests, since the genocidal enemies the free world is facing cannot be subdued by — indeed are empowered by — short-term and inadequate agreements.
As things stand, Israel has widening cause for concern from a US president that our leadership and a sizable majority of the nation were confident would put Israel’s wellbeing high on his global agenda. That “very, very big announcement” better be a real zinger.
Going up in flames
With the US led by an unpredictable leader, the need for Israel to come together in its own defense has never been greater.
Israel has always championed its capacity to defend itself, by itself, but has also depended on core external allies for military, diplomatic and all manner of other practical and psychological support. Since October 7, with the despicable rush to blame the victim — Israel, as it has struggled to defang Gaza’s entrenched, cynical, Hamas government and to secure the release of our hostages — that international support has been in perhaps unprecedentedly steep decline.
Yet Netanyahu continues to whip up internal divides, by decrying all political and public opponents as tools of our enemies, hacking away at all independent state institutions, discrediting the judiciary, and upholding the ultra-Orthodox community’s refusal to serve even as the burden on our reserves forces weighs ever more heavily.
Now he is about to embark on a vastly expanded military operation in Gaza — which risks endangering the hostages, will see more soldiers killed, will kill more Gazans, but which Netanyahu insists will succeed where 18 months of warfare have failed in achieving “total victory.” He claims the latest war plan was produced and recommended by the IDF’s chief of staff.
Yet his far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, on whose support he depends, enthused this week that this operation will eventuate not in the replacement of Hamas by reliable local, regional and/or international governance, but in the “total destruction” of Gaza, the confining of its population to a narrow border area, and the permanent reoccupation of the Strip by Israel and Israeli forces, which is certainly not the IDF’s declared goal.
The perfectly awful metaphor for our debilitatingly divided condition was provided, of course, at the start of Independence Day, when the official live opening state ceremony had to be canceled, and a prerecorded dress rehearsal broadcast instead, because of high winds that led to some of the worst wildfires we have faced in areas around Jerusalem.
Except that this was not a metaphor for a country going up in flames as it tried to celebrate its independence. Parts of the country were actually going up in flames as we tried to celebrate independence, with the TV broadcasts flipping from prerecorded celebrations to real-time wildfires, with the heroic fire and rescue services — overseen by ministerial pyromaniac Itamar Ben Gvir, and rendered strategically under-resourced by our dysfunctional government — desperately trying to gain control over the blazes, even as Netanyahu inaccurately blamed Arab arsonists and his vicious son pointed a finger at “the left.”
“Israel is an extraordinary nation from its founding. It has faced external threats with creativity, resilience and triumph, and [the United States] will always be [its] strongest ally. Yet, Israel’s strength lies in its unity,” an admiring American said a few days later, at an Independence Day event at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC on Monday.
“Over the past 20 months, countless Israelis have sacrificed so much. In their honor, I urge the Israeli people to choose unity over division, vision over disagreement and hope over despair. When you do, Israel’s future will shine brighter than ever,” this speaker elaborated.
Spot on, Steve Witkoff, for it was he. And we really, really need support, open and constructive consultation, and wise leadership from your administration, too.
Perhaps the mercurial US president will yet change his plans and demonstrate his solidarity with Israel by finding time to drop in next week. Perhaps he’s playing a game so clever that, when all is revealed, Iran, the Houthis, Hamas et al will find themselves outmaneuvered and helpless, and we’ll see Trump’s promised new Abraham Accords allies partnering with Israel, and our nation vastly more secure.
Evidently, Israel’s leaders are having trouble exerting much influence. So we can only hope.
“The ties of the Jewish people to this Holy Land are ancient and eternal. They date back thousands of years, including the reign of King David, whose star now flies proudly on Israel’s white and blue flag.” So said Donald Trump, first-term president of the United States, in Jerusalem on May 23, 2017 — doing what his predecessor had failed to in stressing our connection to this land, on an early visit to Israel that his predecessor had chosen not to make.
“But a hopeful future for children in the Middle East requires the world to fully recognize the vital role of the state of Israel,” Trump went on. “And, on behalf of the United States, we pledge to stand by you and defend our shared values so that together we can defeat terrorism and create safety for all of God’s children.”
Amen to that.
The Times of Israel Community.