Watching Trump from afar, Israel fears being left out of a new Middle East it helped create

San Francisco Chronicle​

16-05-2025

As U.S. President Donald Trump jetted from one sprawling palace to another, embracing Arab leaders and heralding a new Middle East this week, many in Israel worried that the best partner they've ever had in the White House had lost interest.
For decades, Israel has leveraged its special relationship with the United States to serve as a gatekeeper to Washington. From the Camp David Treaty with Egypt to the Abraham Accords brokered by Trump in his first term, Arab states seeking U.S. favor usually had to first make nice with Israel. And rarely did their interests prevail if they clashed with Israel's.
But on Wednesday, to Israel's dismay, Saudi Arabia and Turkey brokered a historic meeting between Trump and Syria's new president, and Trump portrayed his decision to lift sanctions on Damascus as a favor to his host, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Israel, which still views Syria as a security threat and had urged Trump to keep the sanctions in place, was ignored, as it apparently was on a number of recent U.S. initiatives in the region, from the ongoing talks with Iran to the ceasefire with Yemen's Houthi rebels. Asked Friday if he knew Israel opposes U.S. recognition of Syria's new government, Trump replied: 'I don't know, I didn't ask them about that.'
'This week there was a party in the Middle East — a grand ball full of colorful costumes, money and gold changing hands — and we found ourselves playing the role of Cinderella before the transformation,' columnist Sima Kadmon wrote in Israel's Yediot Ahronot daily.
'The fairy godmother we thought we had flew off to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.'
Israel sidelined
Trump skipped Israel on his first major foreign tour, which instead took him to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Israel was also left out of a deal with Hamas to free an American hostage from Gaza, where Israel is trying to destroy the militant group. Trump reached a separate truce with Yemen's Houthi rebels that has allowed them to train their fire on Israel, and is holding talks with Iran on its nuclear program that could bring about another deal that Israel rejects.
There have been no open clashes between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom say relations have never been better. Trump has yet to scold Israel, at least in public, as former President Joe Biden occasionally did, over civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip.
But compared to Trump's first term, when he upended decades of U.S. foreign policy to lend unprecedented support to Israel, something has changed.
A focus on quick wins
This time around, Trump seems to be hunting for quick wins — big investment deals to boost the American economy and diplomatic agreements like the India-Pakistan ceasefire and the release of hostages.
In that respect, Netanyahu has little to offer.
Israel's 19-month military campaign in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and reduced entire towns to rubble but has yet to achieve either of Netanyahu's war aims — the defeat of Hamas and the return of all the hostages taken in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war.
Netanyahu has refused to end the war in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages, or to accept a pathway to Palestinian statehood — key Saudi demands for the kind of historic normalization accord that Trump has long sought.
'Trump has given Israel many opportunities, and ammunition prohibited by the Biden administration, to end the war in Gaza. This is what Trump wants," said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations at Israel's Bar-Ilan and Reichman universities. Instead, the war is intensifying.
'Netanyahu is coming closer to the status of a loser in Trump's eyes," Gilboa said.
Trump denies rift and few expect pressure over Gaza
Trump has downplayed any rift, telling reporters on the tour that his relationships with regional leaders are 'good for Israel.'
The irony is that Israel is being excluded from a regional realignment that it largely created, by inflicting punishing losses on Iran and its allies after the Oct. 7 attack. Its thrashing of Hezbollah in Lebanon hastened the downfall of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Iran may be more open to concessions on its nuclear program after a wave of Israeli retaliatory strikes last year.
Michael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., said there is at least one precedent for Trump's approach.
'It's going to drive the people in Washington crazy, but it most closely resembles the Obama administration," he said.
On Barack Obama's first visit as president to the Middle East, he too skipped Israel. Oren, a critic of that administration who was Israel's envoy to the U.S. at the time, said Obama repeatedly violated an unspoken rule of U.S.-Israeli relations — that there be no surprises. That led to public spats with Netanyahu, especially around the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal.
Few expect a repeat under Trump — or that he will publicly press Israel to wind down the war in Gaza, despite the humanitarian catastrophe unleashed by its war and blockade.
Trump has said the days of the United States giving 'lectures' to Middle Eastern countries are over — that decades of American intervention have done more harm than good.
'He's not looking for a fight with Israel,' Oren said. 'He wants to end the war, but the war can end in different ways.'