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Last week, an Israeli news outlet\u00a0reported<\/a> that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believed his close aide and chief hostage negotiator, Ron Dermer, failed to anticipate a shift in U.S. policy. According to the report, Dermer believed the United States under President Donald Trump would not be oppositional to Israel\u2014\u201cbut in effect it is.\u201d Netanyahu\u2019s office rejected the report as fake news. Still, one could be forgiven for thinking there was some truth in the assessment. After nearly four months of delivering a pro-Israel record that even trumped the Biden administration, the past month or so has signaled a change: The president has reached out to Israel\u2019s adversaries\u2014Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran\u2014without close coordination with Israel and moved in ways that none of Trump\u2019s Democratic or Republican predecessors would have dared. Whether Trump\u2019s newfound independence from Israel will lead to serious or sustained pressure on Israel remains to be seen.<\/p>\n It was unrealistic to expect (as many Israelis did) that the sugar high Trump delivered to Israel in his first term would be replicated in the second. After all, many of Trump\u2019s deliverables were essentially unilateral one-offs and easy lifts: recognizing Jerusalem<\/a> as Israel\u2019s capital and moving the U.S. Embassy there and recognizing Israel\u2019s sovereignty over the Golan Heights<\/a>. The Abraham Accords<\/a> required more effort but were seen by Trump and Netanyahu as a way to prioritize peace between Israel and the Arab states over the more complicated Palestinian issue.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Last week, an Israeli news outlet\u00a0reported<\/a> that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believed his close aide and chief hostage negotiator, Ron Dermer, failed to anticipate a shift in U.S. policy. According to the report, Dermer believed the United States under President Donald Trump would not be oppositional to Israel\u2014\u201cbut in effect it is.\u201d Netanyahu\u2019s office rejected the report as fake news. Still, one could be forgiven for thinking there was some truth in the assessment. After nearly four months of delivering a pro-Israel record that even trumped the Biden administration, the past month or so has signaled a change: The president has reached out to Israel\u2019s adversaries\u2014Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran\u2014without close coordination with Israel and moved in ways that none of Trump\u2019s Democratic or Republican predecessors would have dared. Whether Trump\u2019s newfound independence from Israel will lead to serious or sustained pressure on Israel remains to be seen.<\/p>\n It was unrealistic to expect (as many Israelis did) that the sugar high Trump delivered to Israel in his first term would be replicated in the second. After all, many of Trump\u2019s deliverables were essentially unilateral one-offs and easy lifts: recognizing Jerusalem<\/a> as Israel\u2019s capital and moving the U.S. Embassy there and recognizing Israel\u2019s sovereignty over the Golan Heights<\/a>. The Abraham Accords<\/a> required more effort but were seen by Trump and Netanyahu as a way to prioritize peace between Israel and the Arab states over the more complicated Palestinian issue.<\/p>\n Still, by the end of the first Trump term, it was clear that Netanyahu\u2014as he had done with previous administrations\u2014had worn out his welcome. As the president proclaimed his \u201cdeal of the century<\/a>\u201d peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians in 2020, Trump was\u00a0angered<\/a> by Netanyahu\u2019s public statement that he planned to legalize Israeli settlements. Trump also came to believe that Netanyahu was using him on Iran and felt that, having helped Netanyahu politically, he was not reciprocating. Indeed, what sparked Trump\u2019s fury and triggered the famous \u201cfuck him\u201d\u00a0comment<\/a> shortly after Joe Biden\u2019s election was Netanyahu\u2019s congratulatory message to the new president.<\/p>\n In July 2024, Netanyahu made an obligatory pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to\u00a0pay homage<\/a> to the then-presidential candidate. By then, it was clear that there wasn\u2019t a whole lot of love lost between the two men. Unlike many of his predecessors, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Biden, Trump was neither sentimental<\/a>\u00a0nor emotional about Israel. And, despite his flowery and fulsome\u00a0praise<\/a> of Trump as the greatest friend of the Jews since Persian King Cyrus the Great (who had allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple), Netanyahu was wary as well. Their relationship was transactional: driven by what one could do to further the other\u2019s objectives. Indeed, with both eminently adept in the art of the con, it may well be that Trump and Netanyahu understood one another only too well<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump\u00a0inherited<\/a> a very different Middle East in his second term, which was certain to complicate his relationship with the Netanyahu government. Two issues defined the landscape\u2014the Hamas terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and rapid advances in Iran\u2019s nuclear program as a result of Trump\u2019s withdrawal<\/a> from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018. Not only did Trump face the most right-wing government in Israel\u2019s history, but he encountered a risk-ready Netanyahu determined to keep his hard-line coalition together at any price. Fresh from Israeli military successes against Hezbollah and Iran, Netanyahu was eager to convince a risk-averse Trump to eschew diplomacy and take advantage of the moment to strike<\/a>\u00a0Iran\u2019s nuclear sites.<\/p>\n Still, Netanyahu quickly understood that he was no longer dealing with Biden, or even Trump in his first term. There was little doubt that the prime minister agreed to a cease-fire<\/a> with Hamas\u2014just before Trump\u2019s inauguration after months of unsuccessful efforts by Biden\u2014both to stay on Trump\u2019s good side and out of concern for how Trump might react if Israel failed to reach a deal. Netanyahu seemed to grasp that he could neither manipulate nor resist Trump without cost the way he had handled Biden. First, while Trump may have styled himself as the most pro-Israeli president<\/a>\u00a0in history, he had scant investment in the idea, security, and people of Israel that had emotionally\u00a0gripped<\/a> Biden and had stayed his hand when it came to applying pressure. Trump was not anti-Israel, but instead pro-Trump, looking for wins instead of headaches from Netanyahu. Second, Trump had control of the Republican Party, leaving Netanyahu, who famously had tried to oppose then-President Barack Obama\u2019s nuclear deal with Iran by\u00a0allying<\/a> and aligning himself with Republicans, scant room to maneuver in Washington. In short, Netanyahu had no court of appeals in pushing back against Trump policies he didn\u2019t like. The prime minister now understood that he was playing with a much weaker hand, and Trump knew it, too.<\/p>\n At first, in Trump\u2019s second term, it appeared that the U.S.-Israeli relationship would sail on in fairly calm and pleasant waters. Netanyahu was the first foreign visitor<\/a> to the White House, and during that February visit, the two leaders couldn\u2019t have been more in step with one another\u2014or so it seemed. Trump had redesignated the Houthis a terrorist organization; both agreed on the importance of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon; and Trump talked openly<\/a>\u00a0about rebuilding Gaza, perhaps even free of Palestinians. Within his first 100 days, Trump undid the minimal pressure Biden had applied on the Israelis, releasing\u00a0shipments<\/a> of 2,000-pound bombs, repealing<\/a>\u00a0a Biden directive linking U.S. arms sales to human rights, and\u00a0lifting<\/a>\u00a0sanctions on right-wing settlers. He backed Israel in international fora,\u00a0imposing<\/a> sanctions on the International Criminal Court and signing an executive order<\/a> ending American engagement with the U.N. Human Rights Council and funding to UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees. He also increased weapons sales to Israel, including approving<\/a> military sales to Israel worth $7.4 billion, and supported the Israelis when they did not withdraw<\/a>\u00a0their forces from Lebanon.<\/p>\n And yet, even before Trump\u2019s regional visit, a new pattern had begun to emerge, suggesting that the Trump administration was willing to try new tactics that Israel was certain to oppose, often doing so with little or no coordination. Early in March, Trump\u2019s hostage negotiator broke through years of taboos by\u00a0meeting directly<\/a> with Hamas\u2019s external leadership in Doha. From there, the situation from Israel\u2019s perspective got worse. In April, during a second, not-so-warm-and-fuzzy visit by Netanyahu to Washington, Trump announced<\/a>\u00a0with Netanyahu by his side (and much to his dismay) that the United States and Iran had agreed to open negotiations on the nuclear issue. The Israelis had also learned that despite their decision to drop tariffs on U.S. products, the White House had\u00a0imposed<\/a> a 17 percent tariff on Israeli exports.<\/p>\n From there, the non-coordination dominoes seemed to fall one after another. In May, Trump announced, without informing Israel beforehand, that he had\u00a0worked out<\/a> a cease-fire deal with Yemen\u2019s Houthis that protected U.S. naval vessels and shipping but did not preclude attacks on Israel. The pattern of keeping Israel in the dark continued, with\u00a0back-channel<\/a> U.S.-Hamas negotiations that freed dual Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander. Israel found out about the talks not from the White House but from its own intelligence channels<\/a>.<\/p>\n More surprises would follow. Unlike during Trump\u2019s first term<\/a>, he left Israel off his itinerary during his recent regional trip, focusing only on the Gulf, leaving Israel sidelined and marginalized. Indeed, it was on that trip that Trump announced the removal of sanctions on Syria, stunning Netanyahu, who had asked Trump<\/a> not to lift them. It didn\u2019t help matters when a possible follow-on trip to Israel by the vice president, perhaps as a consolation prize, was scrapped,\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0as a result of an expanding Israeli offensive in Gaza.<\/p>\n Over the years, there have surely been tensions and surprises in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. But no administration, Republican nor Democratic, has acted as independently of Israel on matters deemed to be vital to Israeli security interests or to the political interests of an Israeli prime minister.<\/p>\n Part of the new dynamic is surely tied to the fact that Netanyahu is pursuing policies that are in many areas contrary to U.S. interests. But the main driver is Trump, whose decision-making tree consists of one branch: Does the matter at hand advance my needs and that of my \u201cAmerica First\u201d view of the world? Israel is definitely in the mix, but it\u2019s not top of mind. Listen to Mike Huckabee, the first Christian evangelist to be ambassador to Israel and as staunch a supporter and believer in Israel as exists: \u201cThe U.S. doesn\u2019t have<\/a>\u00a0to tell Israel everything that it is going to do.\u201d Nor does Trump, because of his control of the Republican Party, seem at all concerned about the political blowback of his actions. One can only imagine the reaction had any of his Democratic predecessors reached out to Iran, the Houthis, and Hamas within the first several months of their term. Trump has overturned decades of U.S. thinking on Israel by acting without worrying about how Israel or its supporters\u2014whether on Capitol Hill, in the Jewish community, or within Israel itself\u2014might react, often without consulting them at all.<\/p>\n Not since\u00a0Eisenhower<\/a> in the Suez Crisis has any U.S. president threatened serious and sustained pressure on Israel. Could Trump be the first in decades to do so? Would Trump use any of the pressure points on Israel that Biden didn\u2019t: restricting or conditioning U.S. military assistance to Israel; introducing resolutions critical of Israel at the U.N. or not defending Israel in international fora; or unilaterally recognizing Palestinian statehood?<\/p>\n What we\u2019ve seen in the first four-plus months isn\u2019t real pressure, it\u2019s Trump following policies that prioritize what he sees as U.S. interests. So far, he hasn\u2019t taken much away from Israel, and with the exception of warning<\/a> Netanyahu not to attack Iran, he\u2019s allowed him to dictate both the tactics and the strategy in Gaza. Trump seems to have no real emotional stake in Palestinian suffering or statehood as ends in themselves. The administration\u2019s conduct in the Israel-Hamas negotiations clearly\u00a0favors<\/a> Netanyahu\u2019s position, and it is more than likely Trump has concluded that the chances of a happy ending there are quite small. Look at what Trump has enabled the Israelis to do in the West Bank, pursuing policies that are annexationist in everything but name. Twenty-two new settlements were\u00a0approved<\/a>, and not a word of objection. No, these issues would become important only if they somehow became a personal embarrassment for Trump, Netanyahu willfully crossed him in some way, or they interfered with something he really cared about.<\/p>\n But what would that look like? Trump is a short-term dealmaker looking for quick wins\u2014he\u2019d like a Nobel Prize for ending the fighting between Russia and Ukraine, but not the war; he\u2019d like to see a nuclear accord with Iran that parks the issue and gets it off his plate; and in Gaza, he\u2019d like to see the war end but so far has evidenced no interest in embracing any broader initiative aside from turning Gaza into the Riviera<\/a>, let alone trying to negotiate Israeli-Palestinian peace. At one point, he seemed to be enamored with Israeli-Saudi normalization, which would expand the Abraham Accords and possibly get him a Nobel Peace Prize. That, of course, would require ending the war in Gaza and getting something from Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue. It\u2019s Trump: He\u2019s unpredictable, and at some point, he might decide to make a push at least to end the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n If he does, one thing is clear: Netanyahu would do well to replay Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s February encounter<\/a> with Trump and U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance in the Oval Office. Israel isn\u2019t Ukraine. But nearly five months in, Netanyahu is right to be worried about what an unpredictable Trump might do should he come between the president and something he covets and deems to be in America\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n