Among a laundry list of thorny issues the two leaders will discuss, one priority is clear: to demonstrate that there is no longer any daylight between Israel and the U.S. on Middle East policy.
By Alex Traiman, JNS
Barely two weeks after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will arrive in Washington as the first foreign leader to make an official state visit to the White House.
The invitation is a demonstration of respect and friendship to a key American ally and one of the world’s longest-tenured and most accomplished leaders. More importantly, Netanyahu’s visit signals the importance and strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship, which took a beating under the Biden administration.
The speed of the invitation may have come as a bit of a surprise to some, but like many other items on his policy agenda, Trump is wasting no time putting diplomacy into motion. The president has stated repeatedly that he wants the wars raging around the world to come to a close.
Even before stepping into office, Trump said there would be “all hell to pay” if the remaining hostages—including American citizens—held by Hamas and other Gazan terror factions were not released prior to his inauguration. To make sure that happened, the incoming president dispatched Special Envoy-designate Steve Witkoff to the region to negotiate a hostage release and temporary ceasefire.
Phase 1 of such an agreement was agreed to just days prior to Trump’s inauguration, and the first three hostages were released the same day Trump was sworn into office. So far, over a dozen hostages have already been released by Hamas, with at least a dozen more living hostages set to be released in the coming weeks. Israelis are roundly celebrating the slow-drip return of the hostages, who have suffered over 15 months of cruel captivity.
An immoral deal
Yet the deal is both imbalanced and unjust. Israel is releasing approximately 1,900 Palestinian prisoners in return for only 33 of the 98 hostages Hamas was holding when the ceasefire took effect. Many have blood on their hands and are serving life sentences.
Of the 33 to be released in phase one—the only phase to be negotiated thus far—only 26 are believed to be alive. It is not clear how many hostages in total are still alive. Yet for Israel, the return of all hostages, both living and dead, is a national priority.
While phase one calls for a six-week ceasefire, the Israel Defense Forces has withdrawn from key positions throughout Gaza, including the Netzarim Corridor the army paved to divide north and south Gaza, which allows Hamas to regroup and would make the restarting of hostilities more complicated.
Hamas has consolidated its forces, established a new command structure following Israel’s assassinations of its top leadership and recruited new fighters to its ranks. Now it is being bolstered with additional fighters released from Israeli prisons.
In protest against this lopsided deal, hardline minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his right-wing Otzma Yehudit Party resigned from the government, shrinking Netanyahu’s coalition to a bare majority of only 62 out of 120 Knesset members. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has also threatened to resign unless fighting resumes after the initial six months of the truce. Any further resignations risk collapsing Netanyahu’s right-wing government and careening the country into new elections amid an unfinished war.
A temporary or permanent ceasefire
Phase 2 of the deal is intended to call for a permanent ceasefire and the return of all living hostages. Phase 3 would see all bodies returned and rebuilding efforts commence. Israel will likely be pressed to release even more murderers in exchange for the remaining hostages in both phases.
It is strongly believed that Netanyahu will impress upon Trump the need to resume fighting in Gaza. The surreal scenes of the hostage transfers so far demonstrate that Hamas remains in charge in Gaza, retaining a potent albeit heavily diminished fighting force.
As part of the ceasefire arrangement, hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been allowed to migrate from humanitarian safe zones in Gaza’s south back to the once heavily-populated north, only to find that their homes and neighborhoods have been destroyed.
Many residents have just as quickly returned south as the level of destruction throughout Gaza comes into focus.
Resettlement of Gazans
Since the very beginning of the war, Gazans have had no place to go. While Gaza has a nine-mile border with Egypt, Israel’s southern neighbor has refused to accept any Gazan refugees. Western nations have demonstrated how little they care for Palestinians by repeatedly warning Israel over the “displacement of Gazan citizens.” As a result—and in stark contrast to the Russia-Ukraine war—Gazans have been denied the basic humanitarian right of being able to flee a war zone.
In the last week, President Trump has stated what should have been obvious on Day 1 of the war: Egypt and Jordan should take Palestinian refugees. While both nations have repeatedly refused to do so, Trump has doubled down, noting that both nations receive a tremendous amount of U.S. foreign assistance and insisting they will take Gazans if pressed to do so.
A major question is whether Trump sees the resettlement of Gazans abroad as a temporary measure, so the Strip can be cleaned out for rebuilding, or whether such resettlement is intended to be permanent.
Regardless, if Gazans are afforded the opportunity to leave, getting the remaining hostages out becomes an even more urgent priority. Once the gates of Gaza are opened, it will be difficult to prevent hostages from being smuggled abroad. Israel needs its hostages home immediately.
Who controls Gaza on the ‘day after’?
Should Trump’s hopes of getting Gazans out of the Strip come to pass, it would constitute a major victory for Israel, and help Jerusalem finally achieve its stated war goals of eliminating Hamas as a military force and transferring control of Gaza to another entity.
Which entity remains to be seen. The Biden administration had repeatedly called for handing Gaza back to the Palestinian Authority. The P.A. lost control of the Strip to Hamas in 2007, and barely holds on to control in the West Bank, where Hamas is increasingly popular.
Over the past several decades the P.A. has refused to crack down on terror organizations in its territory, and continues to pay salaries to Palestinian terrorists sitting in Israeli jails. The P.A. has done nothing to lay the groundwork for peaceful coexistence with Israel and consistently incites terror in its schools, television and in public speeches.
Israel has insisted the P.A. cannot and must not be the answer in Gaza. As far as Israel is concerned, the P.A. and Hamas are two sides of the same coin.
So if Hamas is not in charge, and the P.A. cannot take over, who governs Gaza after the war remains a pressing question, one Trump and Netanyahu will try to answer.
Israel has floated the idea of relatively moderate Arab nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, playing a role in the rebuilding of Gaza. Other voices in Israel have called for a provisional Israeli military government.
Still others have called for at least some Israeli resettlement of Gaza. Israelis now widely recognize the evacuation of 8,500 Israelis from 21 thriving Jewish communities in Gaza back in 2005 as one of the worst policy failures in the country’s history. Since Israel’s withdrawal, Gaza has turned into a hornet’s nest of terrorism, culminating in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack, the worst massacre in modern Israeli history.
Trump is hoping to permanently end the conflict between Israel and Gaza. And as a real estate developer, Trump sees miles of fertile beachfront property that can be built to resemble Tel Aviv—a city with some of the world’s highest residential property values.
Pathway to a Palestinian state?
Throughout the war, the Biden administration doubled down on its view that the conflict proved the need for the creation of a Palestinian state. For Israel, the war has proved the opposite. Israelis from across the political spectrum now recognize that Israeli withdrawals and so-called peace processes never lead to peace, and that only Israeli sovereignty can guarantee the country’s security and survival on the small tract of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Yet, many warn that Trump may not be onboard with an Israeli sovereignty push. He famously rejected Netanyahu’s effort to declare sovereignty in the Jordan Valley toward the end of his first term. Perhaps Trump now better understands the lessons of Israel’s bitter experience.
During his presidential campaign, Trump noted that “Israel is a very tiny country,” and pondered aloud as to whether there were ways for the country to “get bigger.” Possibilities for such growth presently before the Jewish state include extending Israeli sovereignty in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, throughout parts or all of the Gaza Strip, in Southern Lebanon and in Southern Syria. In Syria, the IDF currently controls a previously demilitarized buffer zone, and local Syrian Druze communities have called for Israeli sovereignty over their territory.
Yet Trump also pushed at the end of his prior administration for what he termed the “Deal of the Century,” which would have led to the formal creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state in most of Judea and Samaria.
Will the Lebanon ceasefire hold?
As Israel negotiates the terms of a ceasefire in Gaza, it is concluding the first phase of the ceasefire with Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. The Lebanese terrorist group began attacking Israel just a day after the Oct. 7 massacre, and represents a much stronger fighting force than Hamas. When the ceasefire went into effect on Nov. 27, it was seen in Israel as a capitulation to the Biden administration, at a time when the IDF was making significant progress in degrading Hezbollah’s military capabilities.
Under the terms of the truce, the IDF had initially been scheduled to draw down its presence and return to Israel over a period of 60 days. The 60-day period was specifically selected such that it would conclude five days after Trump’s inauguration. Even before Trump took office, however, Israel informed Washington that it would not fully withdraw for at least another 30 days, due to near daily violations of the ceasefire by Hezbollah.
When the ceasefire in Lebanon was signed, Netanyahu told Israeli citizens it would be temporary. Whether Israel will resume fighting, with American backing, is another major agenda item Trump and Netanyahu will address.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Yemen’s Houthi militia has fired over 100 ballistic missiles and drones at Israel. It has also interrupted commercial shipping in the Red Sea via the Suez Canal—one of the world’s busiest waterways. In addition to hijacking commercial vessels, the Houthis have fired at American naval vessels near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Israel has attacked Yemen’s ports and oil infrastructure in retaliation, and a U.S.-led coalition has also conducted strikes in Yemen, yet the Houthis remain a stubborn threat, one Netanyahu will certainly discuss with Trump.
Most important: Iran
For years, Iran has been developing an intricate network of underground illicit nuclear weapons facilities. Both the Obama and Biden administrations thought it best to lift sanctions and flush the Iranian regime with cash for its nuclear pursuits. Trump famously withdrew from the Obama-brokered 2015 Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and initiated a maximum-sanctions campaign against it, nearly bankrupting the Islamic Republic. However, this decision was reversed by the Biden administration.
Iran has provided funding and material support to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. In addition, Iran has fired over 300 ballistic missiles, 100 cruise missiles and drones at Israel.
As Israel considered retaliating, the Biden administration urged Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities—the latter being Iran’s economic lifeline. Trump for his part had said during his presidential campaign that striking the nuclear facilities should be Israel’s first priority.
Whether Israel can successfully strike at all of Iran’s nuclear facilities remains a major question. Some argue that Israel will require U.S. assistance to mount such strikes, while others argue that only the United States can possibly carry them out.
Weapons supply
Trump may be extremely hesitant to enter the war directly. Netanyahu may be looking for clarity on what Israel will be permitted to do with U.S. diplomatic backing, as well as what military assistance America might provide.
Netanyahu may be seeking a robust weapons package from the United States. It may be the last such package Israel receives; one of the great lessons of the current war is that Israel must not be dependent on weapons from any nation—in particular the United States. However, while Israel is quickly gearing up its own manufacturing capabilities, doing so takes time. And in the meantime, Israel’s stockpiles are dangerously low, leaving Israel vulnerable.
Saudi-Israel normalization
Perhaps the crown jewel of Israeli and American diplomacy during a second Trump administration will be an extension of the first Trump administration’s crown jewel: the Abraham Accords. Trump historically helped broker Israeli normalization agreements with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan. It was noted at the end of Trump’s first administration that as many as five to 10 additional Muslim-majority nations would be willing to normalize relations, including Saudi Arabia—the cradle of Sunni Islam.
It took the Biden administration time to begin attempting to build off the momentum of its predecessor, and the prospects of an Israel-Saudi deal cooled despite consistent public speculation that a deal might well happen in the not-too-distant future. Trump is likely to aggressively attempt to restart the negotiations process.
Saudi Arabia is looking for weapons and some level of defensive alignment with the United States. In his last visit to Washington, Netanyahu called for the creation of a NATO-like alignment of moderate Middle East nations to deal with common military threats. The Israeli leader is likely to build off that call in his meeting with Trump.
Major questions abound as to whether a Saudi-Israel deal will stand alone, or whether negotiations will be tied to a pathway toward the creation of a Palestinian state, or a military campaign against Iran.
No more public daylight
Regardless of what big announcements may or may not come out of the Trump-Netanyahu meeting, among a laundry list of difficult questions, one priority is clear: to demonstrate that there is no longer any public daylight between Israel and the United States on Middle East policy issues.
If one thing has become truly apparent over the past four years, it is that public disagreement between Israel and the United States doesn’t only harm bilateral relations, it destabilizes the entire Middle East, one of the world’s most volatile regions.
Netanyahu and Trump now have a golden opportunity in the first weeks of the Trump administration to correct so much of the awful damage done by the Biden administration, and restore law and order to the Middle East.
Alex Traiman is CEO and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of Jewish News Syndicate, and is covering Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, DC.