U.S. President Donald Trump makes people nervous. Rightly. According to Amit Segal, chief political analyst for Israel’s Channel 12,
Donald Trump … publicly warned Israel’s prime minister not to “interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous state.” His officials, meanwhile, are leaking to reporters that “Bibi is seeing ghosts everywhere” and that if he doesn’t stop the IDF strikes in Syria, “he will self-destruct.” And then Trump invited Netanyahu to the White House.
Segal believes it has to do with Iran’s intention to rearm Hezbollah in Lebanon, using overland routes from Iraq through Syria. The United States has warned Iraq that it could face an attack by Israel if it moves the weapons. Israel has been attacking Hezbollah sites in Lebanon that the government and Lebanese Armed Forces appear incapable of destroying, despite the government’s pledge to do so. But it could also have to do with Trump’s apparent desire to bring Syria into the U.S. orbit, despite continuing attacks on minority Syrian communities, including Israel’s friends, the Druze.
Was Israel invited to the White House to be bawled out for “violating the ceasefire” in either place? Likely not. Take a broader look at its policies, for better and for worse, and consider how Gaza is going.
Trump appears to have a single “peace plan” to offer warring parties: “Here is an opportunity for you to give your people peace, prosperity, security and progress. All you have to do is … .”
It is the same plan every time—offered to friends, enemies and people he doesn’t even know in countries with which he has no experience: Cambodia/Thailand, Ukraine/Russia, Democratic Republic of Congo/Rwanda, Armenia/Azerbaijan.
Israel/Hamas. Israel/Lebanon. Israel/Syria/Syrian militias.
If, as the ruler of a country in discussion with Trump, your aims match his, you take the deal.
The Abraham Accords are built precisely on that principle. The meeting of Central Asian countries with Trump in Washington last month ended with the accession of Kazakhstan to the family of the accords. The entire two-year Gaza war didn’t take one country out of the agreement, and Saudi Arabia is still wandering the edges, nosed along by the President.
But what if you are not that leader and those are not your goals?
Likely, you lie. You tell the president what he wants to hear and then do what you do. Hamas “agreed” to a “ceasefire,” which it broke in the days after by not returning to Israel all of the bodies of the deceased hostages. It also did not disarm and did not surrender governing power. It never intended to. Other countries understood that, which is why not a single country (except Turkey, which Israel forbids) will send troops into Gaza under the “International Stabilization Force” agreed to in U.N. Security Council Resolution 2803.
Israel, perhaps, expected that and continues to take out Hamas targets, including those behind the “Yellow Line” to which the Israel Defense Forces withdrew under the terms. While Arab and European media (and The New York Times), caterwaul about Israel “breaking the ceasefire,” Trump has said nothing critical of Israel for those strikes or Israeli attacks in Lebanon and Syria.
The broader picture is even more interesting.
France, the United Kingdom and Canada, among others, announced that they recognized the “State of Palestine.” Within what borders, with what government was unclear, but they were clear: The State of Palestine exists, and they put restrictions on doing business with Israel. In November, the three—plus Germany, India, Morocco, Finland, Greece, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Estonia, Japan, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia—and the United States—sent more than 100 senior military officers to Israel to learn from the IDF what the IDF had learned.
Israel is, perhaps, less a pariah than the left-wing media would have you believe. It may have something to do with its operations to thwart terror attacks in Europe. Or the discovery that Hamas had a senior-level operative in Canada. Or maybe it had to do with acknowledging reality.
The duplicity of Hamas is clear: lying about “famine and genocide,” as well as casualty figures; the staggering crimes it committed by burying its own military (equipment and soldiers) under its own civilian population, ensuring that they were human sacrifices; stealing and selling humanitarian aid; and murdering recalcitrant Palestinians in the streets. On top of it, X has discovered thousands of accounts from people claiming to be starving in Gaza—and, of course, blaming Israel—but actually living elsewhere.
A broad pattern is unfolding in which Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are on the same side. Trump offered Palestinians, Lebanon and Syria a peaceful future if they made peace with Israel. At the same time, Jerusalem has made it clear that it will do whatever is necessary to protect its borders and its people, including using military force beyond its borders. Trump appears to have no problem with that. And the Europeans matter less than they thought they did.
So it isn’t all falling apart; it is unfolding. Stay tuned.
