Friday, a popular Hebrew account entitled “News of a year ago” tweeted a short video of Donald Trump, then presenting himself for the American president, from May 2024.
“If a Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, she should be ashamed of themselves,” said Trump in the video. “He completely abandoned Israel and no one can believe it.”
A year later, if there is a president that many Israelis see with disbelief, it is Trump himself. Trump – Who campaigned on his record of good relations with Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – spent last month building a vision of American policy in the Middle East which seems to be sidelined by the country and its leader.
Its recent stages have aroused the concerns of Israelis through the political spectrum – as well as the American Jews who, whatever their opinion on Trump or Netanyahu, supported a relationship between the United States and Israeli. And they come at a time when Israel was more and more criticized by other nations which were once close allies.
“Trump reports to Netanyahu,” darling, I have enough “, said the Israeli commentator Dana Fahn Luzon on a televised debate this week on the recent Trump agreement with the terrorist group Houthi, who dismissed missiles in Israel. “That he did not update us, that he could not say it … He does not take into account Netanyahu.”
In his first mandate, Trump granted the Israeli government’s desire list – the displacement of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem, withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear agreement, the normalization of normalization deals with Arab states and more. Before the 2024 elections, almost two-thirds of the Israelis said they preferred Trump to the vice-president Kamala Harris.
The first weeks of his second mandate also attracted Israeli acclamations: Trump negotiated an agreement to release dozens of Israeli hostages from Gaza without committing Israel to end the war – then said that the United States would take control of the territory, which he hoped for Palestinians.
But a change has quickly started to emerge and accelerated in recent weeks:
- In March, an American negotiator participated in direct talks with Hamas. The talks quickly ended after achieving their planned objective, a release of hostages, but they were unprecedented.
- On April 7, when Netanyahu went to the White House in what he said to be an offer to withdraw American prices on Israeli imports, Trump announced that they would remain for the moment.
- During the White House visit, Trump announced that the United States would carry out direct negotiations with Iran, the Chief opponent of Israel and Netanyahu Black.
- Certain reports of these negotiations indicate that they can lead to something similar to the agreement of Iran of the Obama era, which Netanyahu hated.
- A few weeks later, Axios reported that during his first trip abroad next week, Trump hoped to have a summit with the Arab states – and not Israel, which he currently does not intend to visit.
- Then, on May 6, Trump announced that the United States and the Houthi terrorist group in Yemen had reached a truce – without obliging the Houthis to stop attacking Israel. Israeli officials would have been surprised by the agreement, and Netanyahu promised to “defend us alone”.
- Trump would also have put pressure on Israel to leave aid to Gaza, following a two -month stop.
- Reuters reported on Thursday that Trump was asking for Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel as part of a wider pact with the United States – leaving an agreement that would have been the Holy Grail of Netanyahu by the way.
- Finally, Friday, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, abandoned his planned trip to Israel to accompany Trump on his stay in the Middle East.
The criticisms and supporters of Netanyahu and Trump notice. Thursday, the first page of Yediot Aharonot, an Israeli daily, considered critical of Netanyahu, approved that Trump had a “policy of surprises” with regard to Israel. Below, there was a political cartoon showing Trump who was preparing a soup for Netanyahu, who sits, with a shocked expression, at a restaurant table behind the president.
“The Americans are progressing with the Saudis, advancing an agreement with Iran, progressing a new regional outline … But the Americans do not take into account Netanyahu or Israel,” tweeted Yair Golan, head of an Israeli left party. “President Trump, whom Netanyahu saw as a strategic partner for his survival, understands today that Netanyahu is not an asset but a passive.”
Netanyahu’s allies also expressed concerns – or even took a threatening tone. Nissim Vaturi, a Likoud party legislator from Netanyahu, tweeted that Trump “is an important friend of Israel. He must remember that he was elected to the presidency which rises on the wings of support for Israel. ” He then deleted the tweet.
Other voices supervise Trump’s actions as a scourge not only for Netanyahu but for Israel. Avraham Ben-Tzvi, scholar of American-Israeli relations and columnists for the daily newspaper Israel Hayom, underlined a “bitterness” towards Israel in Washington, DC
“The main expression of this bitterness is the touch of Israel and an American effort to advance along the roads that bypass Jerusalem,” he wrote on Wednesday, asking “if a new order in the Middle East is actually formed before our eyes, without Israel as an official partner.”
In the United States, Halie Gésifer, head of the Council of Democratic Jews in America, wrote on Friday that the trend shows what she and other Trump criticisms have long warned: “Despite the false perception that Trump is an ally of Israel, he has become more and more clear that Trump’s foreign policy in Trump does not favor Israel.”
The apparent change in Trump’s approach can be more coherent than it seems, according to Michael Koplow, director of policies at the Israeli policies forum. Using an analogy of “The Godfather”, Koplow wrote that Trump could tell Israel, essentially, that if he wanted to continue fighting in Gaza, this can. But in this case, Trump will be distant from Israel and does not want to be involved in his plans.
“Trump will offer Israel all the support he wants, provided that he is not too expensive and does not require compromise elsewhere,” wrote Koplow. “Trump is not going to Israel because he sees no advantage in going there and does not want to be dragged in the Gaza of Netanyahu Gazchis.”
The apparently discolored perspectives of the normalization of Saudi Israelis are particularly notable because it seemed to be a rare area of consensus: Trump, Biden, Netanyahu and the central Israeli opposition leader, Yair, Lapid, had expressed everything for an Israeli-Saudi agreement in Arabia.
Thomas Friedman, the columnist for the New York Times and the frequent critic of Trump and Netanyahu who reported the prospects for an Israeli -Saudi agreement under Biden before October 7, 2023 of Hamas, attacked the blame on Netanyahu – and congratulated Trump. The title of his column on Friday, written as a letter to Trump, was “this Israeli government is not our ally”.
“Netanyahu put her personal interests before the Israel and America,” wrote Friedman, condemning an Israeli-Saudi agreement, which would have “opened the whole Muslim world to Israeli tourists, investors and innovators, attenuated tensions between Jews and Muslims worldwide and has consolidated the advantages of the Middle East.”
He continued: “After turning everyone from Netanyahu for two years, the Americans and the Saudis would have decided to give up the involvement of Israel in the agreement – a real loss for the Israelis and the Jewish people.”
Trump’s actions sparked a step back on Capitol Hill. Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a fervent supporter of Israel and Trump Ally, said that he would only support an agreement with Iran who dismantled his nuclear program and continued to call for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
A bipartite group of legislators wrote to Trump a letter “to express our serious concern concerning the agreement concluded on May 6 with the Houthi forces supported by Iran in Yemen, which interrupts us the Houthi targets without responding to the threat to Israel.”
But even within Trump’s own party, support for Israel shows signs of slipping. A recent survey of the American Arab Institute revealed that almost half of the Republican respondents agree that Trump should exert greater pressure on Israel to put an end to his occupation and allow a Palestinian state.
Many Trump plans have not yet been finalized. But the Israeli-American writer Sarah Tuttle-Singer posted on Facebook that whatever happens at the end, Trump has embarked on “a dizzying turn of diplomacy of the cervical boost” to the detriment of Israel.
“Trump Courts takes care of our enemies,” she wrote. “He is negotiating with Iran, signs understanding with Houthis and redraws the lines in the region with Israel excluded from the play.”
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