Did Israel and Netanyahu Trump be completely underestimated? – The striker

columnist
Dan Perry
May 9, 2025

In the official Israeli circles there is a coveted realization that President Donald Trump may not be the pushy that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had taken over. After all, Trump's Netanyahu warehouse welcomed the presidential victory with hardly hidden glee. His first term in office had delivered a number of triumphs for Israel's rights – and frankly a lot of Israeli society.

He recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the US message there to end the long-standing anomaly of the federal states, who tried to determine the location of the capital of another nation. Then the American recognition of Israeli sovereignty came over the Golan heights, a territory that was caught from Syria in 1967 and officially annexed by Israel. He supervised the Abraham Agreement, the normalization between Israel and the VAE, Bahrain and other countries of the new head. These agreements marked a change of sea – in particular the business of the United Arab Emirates, which for the first time offered Israelis not only a formal recognition, but also a warm hug without requesting visible concessions.

For many to Israeli law, Trump seemed to be a dream president: uninterested in Palestinian statehood, non -culture of human rights criticism that do not correspond to settlements in the West Bank and largely with their “power equipment” world view. But these days may be gone.

How quickly things seem to change. A few weeks ago, Trump announced that he and Netanyahu were “on the same side of each issue”. Now he skipped Israel from the Middle East when he visited his new presidency and has reportedly withdrawn from his once physical relationship to his Israeli counterpart.

But in a precise look, the cracks in this relationship are not quite as new as they seem. When Netanyahu made a last-minute visit to the White House, mainly trying to impose Trump from Israel, Trump seemed to attack him with the announcement that the United States was resumed at nuclear discussions with Iran.

Netanyahu sat visibly stunned next to him. The three rounds of conversations that have now been held seem to lead to an agreement that is negotiated after a return to the Iranian deal as part of the former president Barack Obama: Iran would give up with a highly entitled material that continues with checking the lower level and received a sanction aid.

The shocks kept coming up. At the beginning of this week, shortly after a Houthi rocket was met on the site of the Israel Ben Gurion Airport, what was the case that most airlines to quit Israel-revealed a deal with the Houthis to end those of American strikes that are aimed at the group in Yemen. In return, the Houthis would stop attacking ships that drove through the Red Sea towards Suez Canal.

Left out of the deal? Every promise of the Houthis to shoot on Israel. The timing, two days after the airport incident, again made Israelis feel that Trump had thrown her under the bus.

And Trump seems irregularly in the Gaza, now seems skeptical of the indefinite war that Israel seems to be imagining.

Yes, his signals were at best contradictory. Just a few days before taking office, he was generally put under pressure to put Netanyahu under pressure in order to sign a gradual ceasefire with Hamas, in exchange for the publication of all Israeli hostages. Then as if Trump had the bombastic idea of ​​spending all Palestinians from Gaza and “buying” the USA as a “purchase” of the territory.

After he had allowed Netanyahu to resume military operations, he now wants a quick, decisive victory that he can claim as his own – a distant vision of the military occupation that the government officially pursued this week towards the direction. However, the view of an endless war may be helpful to keep Netanyah's disadvantaged coalition together, but does not match Trump's narrative.

Israeli law of being dull seems to have read it wrong. They were ready to overlook the fact that Trump's affection for Israel was not the result of a real emotional bond, which was credibly projected by former President Bill Clinton. He never declared himself a Zionist like the former President Joe Biden when landing in Tel Aviv in 2022.

But in contrast to bidges, he has never tried to restrict Israel's military movements into Gaza strips. When Trump returned to power, Netanyahu probably expected an empty check. He may have believed that he could manipulate the famous Mercurial ex-president, and many in 2018 when he persuaded Trump to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear agreement. (In retrospect, Trump might be just striving to tear a deal hit by Barack Obama).

At the center of these developments is an interesting truth: Trump is not the former President Theodore Roosevelt. Where Roosevelt said: “Say quietly and wear a big stick”, Trump does the opposite. He speaks loudly – often absurd so – but despite all of his prudules, he is at least militarily something pacifist. His wars are trade wars. He evaluates business with which he was able to explain the victory without shooting a shot.

Although there have been no public explanations of a crack, the signs are increasingly visible. It is not just that Trump avoids visiting Israel: In another breathtaking shift, he seems to be ready to continue with a strategic defense pact with Saudi Arabia, even without conditioning with Israel.

Biden had made normalization an important prerequisite; Trump seems to have dropped. This is certainly not what everyone hoped for in Israel: normalization with Saudi Arabia is a sacred grail of Israeli diplomacy and would be a boost for his economy, an opportunity to break the last great Arab resistance against the acceptance of the Jewish state.

Trump's next movements are impossible to predict and he was able to turn on a cent over and over again. However, the signs are that he has found that Netanyahu-right coalition partners is obliged and demands maximum war goals to deliver what Saudi Arabia needs to ensure a diplomatic jump. If the normalization is up due to Netanyahu, Trump sees little value to delay an agreement with Riyadh, ie an urgently needed victory for foreign policy.

This would be a catastrophic loss for Israel. Instead of using the long -term opportunity to establish connections to your powerful neighbor, Israel seems to waste it when Netanyahus coalition remains intact. The Israeli public can only be observed as a price for this goal – paid for by the blood of hostages and soldiers, a fighting economy and missed diplomatic breakthroughs.

What seems to have seemed to have recognized – perhaps clearer than many Israelis himself – is that the current government in Jerusalem is not a true ally of the United States

The Israeli people are predominantly. But the government of Netanyahu, who is driven by internal survival and committed extremists, is not only with American interests, but also with Israeli.