Waiting on a friend: Will Netanyahu get a sweet deal—or a raw deal—from Trump?
Monty Hall, the legendary host of television’s Let’s Make a Deal game show, was a patron of the Jewish state. But it’s US President Donald Trump—the co-author of Trump: The Art of the Deal, and a person not to be upstaged—who claims unabashedly to be the “best friend that Israel has ever had.” That title will be put to the test on February 4, when he hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
Trump’s pre-presidency was frenetic. Never a disciple of the “one president at a time” school, he injected himself aggressively into the spotlight, dispatching Steve Witkoff, his new Middle East envoy, to that region within weeks of the November election and threatening (amorphously) that there would be “ALL HELL TO PAY” unless hostages in Hamas custody were released by the time of his inauguration. Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor, was quick to attribute Israel’s ceasefires with both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza to the advent of a new administration.
Palpable apprehension in world capitals about what courses of action Trump might—or might not—pursue has been a powerful driver of events. However, the significance of January 20 as an inflection point cannot be overexaggerated. With Trump now ensconced firmly in the Oval Office, rhetoric alone will prove insufficient to induce tangible cooperation from the United States’ counterparts, who will be monitoring the pulse of his intentions rigorously.
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Washington watchers in Jerusalem have been, unsurprisingly, surveying the appointments topography for clues to decipher Trumpland, but they have found its landscape equivocal. Israeli officials are encouraged by the nominations of friendlies Mike Huckabee and Elise Stefanik—as ambassadors to Israel and the United Nations, respectively—but diplomats are not policymakers, and the perspective of Trump’s executive cadre is by no means monolithic. The president himself has toggled in recent months between pledging to “stop all wars” and, on the other hand, telling Netanyahu to “do what you have to do” when it comes to Israel’s enemies. (Relations between the two leaders have known highs and lows.)
Soon after his victory, Trump unceremoniously disinvited Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, two trusted interlocutors of Israel during his previous tenure, from returning to his leadership team. That vacuum has been filled apparently by Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who both advocated on Capitol Hill for a strong US-Israel bond, but few other principals share their level of prior, high-level engagement with the intricate dynamics of that alliance. Meanwhile, senior bureaucratic echelons at the Pentagon—which has been an essential partner in enhancing Israel’s national security—are being populated by staffers who favor greater detachment from the Middle East.
It is against this backdrop that Netanyahu arrives in Washington to plead his case. His wish list from Trump will include US acquiescence for Israel to continue its campaign to dislodge Hamas rule from Gaza; normalization with Saudi Arabia; and a kinetic effort—or, at least, US backing for a potential solo Israeli endeavor—to terminate the threat of a nuclear Iran. The paradox of Netanyahu’s predicament is that Trump’s favorable disposition toward that agenda does not mean their approaches will be similarly aligned.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—a stalwart critic of the current truce—is touting assurances from the prime minister to intensify the Gaza war and initiate “a gradual takeover” that ensures “humanitarian aid will not reach Hamas as it has been until now.” Smotrich, a proponent of exercising Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza, has also vowed repeatedly to scuttle any diplomatic breakthrough with Riyadh that would entail territorial concessions to the Palestinians. On the Iranian front, Israeli military planners are training their sights increasingly on the near term, before Tehran can recover from the blows that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has inflicted on its defenses and on its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies.
Those parameters are almost certain to conflict with the president’s thinking. By all accounts, Trump, as evidenced through Witkoff’s interventions, is interested actually in extending the suspension of combat in Gaza, for the sake of securing the release of all captives and stabilizing the area. The track would then be cleared for Israeli-Saudi rapprochement—along lines that would likely be anathema to Smotrich—and a coveted Nobel Peace Prize for Trump. As for Iran, indications suggest that the president might prefer initially to try and settle that standoff through negotiations.
The ball is very much in Trump’s court now. Witkoff met on January 30 with Smotrich and Shas chairman Aryeh Deri, two key stakeholders of Netanyahu’s government, in an attempt to enlist their support for his mission, but their consent will hinge ultimately on the specifics involved. (Right-wing Israelis, who are hoping anxiously that Trump will adopt their cause, have latched tightly onto his manifest enthusiasm for transferring Gaza’s residents to neighboring Egypt and Jordan, although the wisdom and feasibility of that program—opposed stridently by those countries and by Palestinians themselves—are dubious.) The time for command decisions is close at hand.
Cessations of hostilities in Lebanon and Gaza are both fragile. Netanyahu’s coalition is also in crisis, with saber-rattling between its various members—who are at loggerheads over controversial legislation to exempt Ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service—jeopardizing the passage of a national budget before a March 31 deadline. Separately, Smotrich has committed to bolt unless the IDF resumes its Gaza incursion, in parallel with expanding counter-terrorism operations in the West Bank. Not only the prime minister’s political fate, but also the future of the entire Middle East is hanging in the balance, waiting for Trump to decide how much slack he is prepared to grant Netanyahu.
Much will depend on the president’s definition of friendship for Israel: Will it entail space for the IDF to keep fighting Hamas until the achievement of “total victory”—as Netanyahu has promised and many Israelis are still demanding—at the possible cost of derailing progress with Saudi Arabia? Will it, rather, obligate Israel to wind down its offensive and satisfy Saudi requirements for a pathway to Palestinian statehood, thus, in all likelihood, precipitating the collapse of Netanyahu’s majority in the Knesset? Or might it entertain tradeoffs such as greater Israeli flexibility vis-à-vis the Palestinians in exchange for an augmented US role in confronting Iran?
There will be inherent risks in any strategy that Trump chooses to embrace. The only certain thing is that now, as commander in chief, he controls an arsenal of formidable carrots and sticks to deploy in the service of his administration’s objectives. On February 4, the world will be watching to see whether he offers Netanyahu a deal that he can’t refuse.
Shalom Lipner is a nonresident senior fellow for Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. From 1990 to 2016, he served seven consecutive premiers at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. Follow him on X: @ShalomLipner.
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Image: FILE PHOTO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands with U.S. President Donald Trump after signing the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Middle East neighbors, in a strategic realignment of Middle Eastern countries against Iran, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., September 15, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner/File Photo