On May 12 an American-Israeli dual citizen and Israeli soldier, Edan Alexander, was released from Hamas captivity in Gaza after direct U.S.-Hamas negotiations that sidestepped Israel. The images that accompanied his release looked like an American operation that just happened to take place in Israel. It was a U.S. hostage negotiator, Adam Boehler — who conducted direct talks with Hamas in March — who accompanied Mr. Alexander’s mother on the flight from her home in America to Israel, and it was a U.S. envoy, Steve Witkoff, who handed her a phone to speak with her son at the moment of his release. Headlines highlighted President Trump’s phone call with Mr. Alexander. The message was clear: It was Mr. Trump, not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who got Israel’s soldier out of Gaza.
This is not the Trump administration that Mr. Netanyahu had so eagerly anticipated. On almost every significant strategic and geopolitical issue that matters to Israel — from seeking a new nuclear deal with Iran to a cease-fire with the Houthis, from embracing the new Syrian regime to negotiating directly with Hamas on hostage release — Mr. Trump is not only bypassing Israel but also moving in a very different direction from what Mr. Netanyahu would have chosen. The U.S. administration has sidelined Israel again and again. In so doing, Mr. Trump and his team have managed to expose Israel’s policy of destruction and the failings of Israel’s leader, whose lone success has been staying in power through pursuing constant war.
That doesn’t mean that there is an open crisis between Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu or that Israel has lost the United States as its most powerful ally or even that Mr. Trump will force Israel to stop the war in Gaza. Indeed, in Gaza the United States has mostly left the Netanyahu coalition to its own devices. When the prime minister sat down with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office in February, after a cease-fire in Gaza was imposed on Mr. Netanyahu, he and his far-right coalition received the gift of Mr. Trump’s Gaza Riviera idea — which lent legitimacy to the idea of mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. The Trump administration has since provided further support and weapons to Israel, including the 2,000-pound bombs that President Joe Biden had restricted, and reportedly floated the idea of transferring one million Palestinians to Libya.
But Mr. Trump talks about putting “an end to this very brutal war,” while Mr. Netanyahu is now openly promising to “take control of all parts of Gaza” and “complete victory.” Since Israel broke the cease-fire in March, more than 3,000 Gazans have been killed, many of them civilians. Israel’s policy has starved the remaining two million people of Gaza, which Mr. Trump acknowledged as he departed the Persian Gulf region on May 16, even as he did not prevent it from happening. And Israel is not any closer to victory. On May 18, after more than two months of freezing all aid into Gaza on the allegation that Hamas has been profiting from it, Mr. Netanyahu grudgingly approved the immediate entry of nominal aid after the United States and the Israeli military warned that the strip is on the brink of mass starvation. Now Britain, France and Canada have issued a statement threatening punitive action, including sanctions on Israel, if it does not stop its renewed military offensive and immediately let more aid in.
Mr. Netanyahu is increasingly in a corner. He can no longer blame his inability to defeat Hamas on the Biden administration for restricting him on Gaza. Nor can he blame his defense minister or army chief of staff or those leading the negotiating team — all of whom he recently replaced — or even a top Hamas leader, Muhammad Sinwar, whom Israel is reported to have targeted on May 13.
There is a crisis among reservist soldiers experiencing a combination of fatigue and lack of motivation for an operation they don’t believe will achieve its goals, compounded by ultra-Orthodox coalition partners demanding a law to exempt their constituents from military service. A majority of the Israeli public and a critical mass of former heads of Israel’s security establishment favor a hostage deal to end the war. They have turned directly to lobbying Mr. Trump, hoping he might force Mr. Netanyahu’s hand, as the president did to secure the release of Mr. Alexander.
It appears that the White House finally sees Mr. Netanyahu for what he is: a weak Israeli leader with seemingly little or nothing to offer Mr. Trump, who appears more interested in trade, business and a Nobel Peace Prize than in continuing to fund an endless war.
That is quite a shift. After Mr. Trump won the election, Mr. Netanyahu saw an ally coming into the White House. This was, after all, the same president who recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in his first term. And it is the same president who, since retaking office, protected Mr. Netanyahu from the International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest by imposing sanctions on the court and overseeing an aggressive campaign to repress free speech and dismantle pro-Palestinian activism in the United States.
Now it is the president who has left Mr. Netanyahu looking more isolated, humiliated and inept than ever before.
A few months ago, Israel appeared to be making historic gains in its decades-long battle for hegemony in the Middle East: It had crushed Hezbollah in Lebanon, left Iran vulnerable and contributed to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. These days, Israel is a shell of itself. The country is left with a military with vast capabilities and resources adept at surveillance and destruction and a leader who has mastered the art of political survival by crushing dissent and manipulating narratives. Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition of far-right settlers and ultra-Orthodox Jews is sticking together because they have nowhere else to go. Whether Mr. Trump will finally compel Mr. Netanyahu to end the war on Gaza is still very much in question, but Israel’s ability to steer the conversation or shape the terms of regional dynamics has been significantly diminished by its dead-end campaign.
What Mr. Netanyahu is selling — a zero-sum victory over Hamas and with no guarantee of returning the remaining hostages — no longer has any buyers. These days he seems trapped. But he is also a master of self-preservation. The question is how he will get himself out of it this time and how many more lives it will cost.
Ms. Zonszein is a contributing Opinion writer and a senior Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group.
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