The only thing more certain than the sun rising in the east and setting in the west is that a Republican president will always support Israel—and that Democratic presidents will largely do the same while being blamed for the opposite.
And yet, U.S. President Donald Trump is visiting the Middle East this week, and his trip does not include Israel, despite lobbying from the Netanyahu government for him to do so. He recently negotiated a cease-fire with the Houthis in Yemen, even though their stated intention is to continue striking Israel. He even removed his national security advisor, Mike Waltz, reportedly in part for the sin of coordinating potential strikes on Iranian nuclear sites with Israeli officials without consulting him.
Trump may not be about to break with Israel completely—and certainly not for the humanitarian reasons many left-wingers might hope—but it seems increasingly clear from his conduct that “America First” may not have an exception for Israel after all.
One could be forgiven for expecting a strongly pro-Israel policy from this administration. After all, during Trump’s first term in office, much of his Middle East policy was shaped by son-in-law Jared Kushner (whose father was friendly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), by pro-Israel mega-donors such as Sheldon Adelson, and by a strong coterie of pro-Israel advisors inside the White House (John Bolton) and on Capitol Hill (Sen. Lindsey Graham).
His first administration’s policies could hardly have been more popular with the Netanyahu government. Trump canceled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, imposed “maximum pressure” sanctions, and even increased military pressure on Iran, resulting in widespread tit-for-tat attacks with Iranian proxies in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere, culminating in the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani. On the diplomatic side, Trump moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, while his Abraham Accords sought for the first time to allow the Gulf states and Israel to bring their nascent cooperation against Iran out of the shadows. Things could scarcely have been better for Israel.
That was why the assumption among most foreign-policy observers during the presidential campaign was that Trump would be unquestioningly supportive of Israel if reelected; for voters, he offered little contrast to the policies of incumbent President Joe Biden. Indeed, though a number of progressive voters and Arab Americans refused to vote for Democratic presidential nominee and then-Vice President Kamala Harris over the Biden administration’s stance on the war in Gaza, they were largely ridiculed for suggesting that Trump might be any better. The Trump transition, with the appointment of pro-Israel Republican hawks such as Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, and Waltz, appeared to bear this out.
Almost from day one, however, Trump has proved this assumption to be, if not wrong, then at least incomplete. Even before Inauguration Day itself, the new administration took credit for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Though many of the details of the arrangement had in fact been brokered by the Biden administration, it took Trump’s ability to pressure the Israelis through his personal fixer, Steve Witkoff, to bring the deal to fruition. The cease-fire would eventually fall apart thanks to renewed Israeli bombing, but the administration continues to bring pressure to bear on Israel to make concessions to free hostages, particularly those with American citizenship.
The gap between Trump and Netanyahu has been widest on Iran. During Trump’s first term, he and his staff were largely in lockstep on Iran policy, dialing up pressure and exploring military options. Yet clearly, the president and those around him feel that this did not achieve the results they were seeking. Instead of maximum pressure, this time the administration is in dealmaking mode with an aim of kick-starting negotiations. Some sanctions, for example, were tightened before the administration reopened negotiations on the nuclear question; expanded strikes on the Houthis ultimately led to a climbdown by the administration and a cease-fire. Israeli officials complain that they are out of the loop on these important decisions.
Likewise, a variety of leaks suggest daylight between the U.S. and Israel on whether to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Israeli government under Netanyahu is pushing for such strikes and has variously suggested that it will go it alone without the United States—or tried to cajole the United States into joining the attack. Thus far, however, the Trump administration has been notably unwilling to do so. Considering the pre-election assumption of unconditional support for Israel, Trump looks surprisingly squishy on some of Netanyahu’s core security preferences.
It is important not to read too much into this shift. The Trump administration has continued to sell weapons to Israel for use in Gaza and has done relatively little to pressure the Israelis on questions relating to humanitarian needs or access for aid agencies. On the home front, the administration has weaponized immigration law against pro-Palestinian protesters, locking up several foreign students for their involvement in campus protests and insinuating in court that support for Gaza is akin to support for Hamas.
Trump himself has even expressed support for the purposeful displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, one of the most horrifying actions proposed by elements of the Israeli government. Though it came with Trumpian flair—in this case a truly bizarre AI-generated video of a post-reconstruction Gaza Riviera, featuring a towering golden statue of the man himself—the purposeful displacement of civilians from a conflict zone remains a war crime under widely accepted international laws.
Yet in some ways, this dichotomy exemplifies why Trump’s approach to Israel is so unique: He’s operating on a completely different axis of analysis than most U.S. foreign-policy debates. He is not unquestioningly supportive of Israel, but neither is his focus on humanitarian issues and the question of Palestinian rights. Instead, he appears to actually be living up to his campaign slogan: “America First” policy that prioritizes U.S. interests.
This approach puts him at odds with many of his predecessors—and most of the D.C. foreign-policy community. Most presidents and their advisors handle Israel policy carefully; the scope of U.S.-Israel relations remains a fraught question, featuring decades of difficult peace process negotiations, domestic political considerations, and political and rhetorical landmines. Even policymakers broadly supportive of Israel—or whose views align with one segment of Israeli society but not another—can find themselves painted as insufficiently supportive.
The Obama administration, for example, struggled when selling the Iran nuclear deal to articulate why U.S. interests and Israeli interests might diverge on this question, settling at least partly on the argument that Netanyahu’s government was not representative of Israel’s true security needs. The Biden administration, meanwhile, was so careful to avoid rhetorical and policy landmines when it came to Israel that it was scared to step anywhere. Instead, it largely gave Netanyahu everything he asked for while privately grousing to reporters about the Israeli leader’s intransigence.
Trump and Witkoff don’t seem to care about these delicate political questions. They’re just looking for the best deal for Washington. Indeed, this might be the strangest part of the whole situation. Trump isn’t opposed to what Israel is doing in Gaza, and he’s made clear that he will not pressure Israel to stop the war, particularly now that the last U.S. citizen hostages are free. His administration will probably continue to crack down on campus protesters and progressive-leaning groups that criticize Israel.
He himself, however, will not be bound by the same rules. And even though he’d like a peace deal in Gaza, or an expansion of the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia, or a nuclear deal with Iran acceptable to Israel, it seems increasingly clear that he is willing to walk away if these can’t be achieved. Trump may not pressure Israel on Iran, Gaza, settlements, or anything else, but he’s perfectly willing to sign deals without Israel and let it handle the aftermath.
There’s nothing strange or unusual in admitting that interests between allies sometimes diverge. Yet it would be truly ironic if Trump were the person to pioneer a healthier U.S.-Israel alliance. In recent decades, U.S. leaders have in many ways lost the ability to tell Israel’s government when it is going too far. But as Trump is making clear, that isn’t an approach that is always compatible with putting American interests first. If he continues down this path, it may well be time to abandon the assumption that America First has an Israel exception.
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