President Trump deserves credit for pushing to stabilize three Middle East flashpoints — Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Yet on all three fronts, the region’s most powerful player and ostensibly America’s closest ally, Israel, is undercutting Mr. Trump’s Middle East strategy.
After the trauma of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Israel has embraced a take-no-risks doctrine that gives the use of force and territorial control priority over diplomacy. The contradiction is stark: A policy of continuing pre-emptive strikes increases the risk of escalation — the opposite of taking no risks.
Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel plans to meet Mr. Trump in the United States on Dec. 29. To prevent a slide back into war, the American president should be forthright and forceful with Mr. Netanyahu. He needs to detail the requirements for stabilizing the region and his expectation that Mr. Netanyahu act accordingly. In the run-up to that meeting, Arab leaders would do well to offer support for Mr. Trump’s agenda, making the transition to Phase 2 of his peace plan for Gaza a priority.
In Lebanon, the administration’s call for near-instant disarmament of Hezbollah, the country’s most powerful military and political force and Israel’s bitter enemy, ignored global precedents of disarmament as a gradual process and set unrealistic expectations. When these expectations went unmet, Israel signaled that a major operation could be imminent, despite a yearlong U.S.-French-brokered cease-fire. Israel already occupies five outposts inside Lebanon and wages daily strikes and incursions.
In Syria, Israel launches frequent military incursions while demanding the demilitarization of the entire area between Damascus and the Golan Heights, adjacent to Israel’s northeastern border. At the same time, it holds on to what it considers a security zone inside Syrian territory.
The Gaza Strip remains the riskiest flashpoint. Mr. Netanyahu’s veto of any role for the Palestinian Authority in the strip risks undoing Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan that produced the cease-fire agreement in October. His objection has nothing to do with national security. It has everything to do with the threat by the messianic annexationists he chose to govern with to quit his coalition if he accepts a P.A. role in Gaza, which would end his premiership.
The Trump plan calls for an international stabilization force as a necessity for disarming Hamas, enabling further Israeli withdrawals, protecting the civilian committee that is to govern the strip and providing security for the ensuing reconstruction process. However, Arab and mostly Muslim countries that might contribute troops to the force consider the involvement of the Palestinian Authority essential, however symbolic it might be initially.
Without it, the force will be viewed among the populations of the stabilizing force nations, along with many other people across the Arab world and in Gaza, as merely replacing one occupation — Israeli — with another. Only an invitation from the Palestinian Authority, and its involvement from the get-go, can provide legitimacy. Arab states also see the authority’s involvement as a step toward reuniting Gaza and the West Bank, a prerequisite for a two-state solution.
Phase 2 of Mr. Trump’s plan — the disarming of Hamas, Israel’s full withdrawal from the half of Gaza it still controls, reconstruction, the assembling of the stabilization force — is stuck without Arab participation. At the same time, the cease-fire, which is at the heart of Phase 1, is in jeopardy. Daily clashes threaten it while 2 million Gazans endure inhumane conditions.
Israeli officials have met Washington’s optimistic announcements about the imminence of Phase 2 with skepticism, cynicism and an attitude of “If we don’t disarm Hamas, no one will” — code for readiness to resume war. With the living Israeli hostages and all but one dead hostage back home, an important incentive for Israel to live up to its Phase 1 obligations has been removed.
Sensing that Israeli escalation threatens his entire regional architecture, Mr. Trump intervened. In a Dec. 1 call, he reportedly urged Mr. Netanyahu to “take it easy” in Syria. Mr. Netanyahu responded with gestures meant to signal “I hear you” without really changing policy.
In that spirit, he agreed to reopen the Rafah crossing into Egypt, one of the main passages into and out of Gaza, but in one direction only: There are exits, but no returns and no transit of humanitarian aid, all contrary to what is specified in Mr. Trump’s plan, which called for travel both ways for people and humanitarian aid.
On Lebanon, Mr. Netanyahu dialed back talk of imminent escalation and dispatched a civilian liaison with a narrow economic brief. On Syria, the Israeli government claimed an agreement was possible — if Israel’s maximal security demands were met.
These thin concessions may explain why Mr. Trump called for a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, the sixth of his second term.
For the past year, whenever Mideast leaders presented Mr. Trump with a united front, an actionable plan and the willingness to do much of the heavy lifting while giving him credit for success, he acted. On the eve of his inauguration, they offered to secure Hamas’s consent to a cease-fire if Mr. Trump secured Mr. Netanyahu’s. He did. In March, they backed an Egyptian reconstruction plan that sidelined Mr. Trump’s “Gaza Riviera” fantasy. He went along. In July, a Saudi-French initiative linked Gaza stabilization to broader Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and regional integration. Those elements made their way into his 20-point plan.
It can happen again. Arab, European and other partners should present the White House with a short list of Israeli policy changes essential for unlocking Phase 2. This list might include acceptance of P.A. involvement and further Israeli withdrawals corresponding to gradual Hamas disarmament. It might also comprise an increase in humanitarian assistance and reopening Rafah both ways, as well as an approval of a list, overseen by the Egyptians, of unaffiliated Palestinian technocrats who are to serve on the committee to govern Gaza.
For Mr. Trump to agree to push those terms on Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Trump would need to hear a clear message from those leaders: “If you deliver Mr. Netanyahu, we will deliver Hamas. If Israel complies with the terms of your peace plan, we pledge contributions to the International Stabilization Force and to the Gaza reconstruction fund.”
The choice confronting the president is now stark: enforce discipline on America’s closest regional ally or watch a fragile architecture buckle under the weight of Mr. Netanyahu’s creeping escalation. The window for avoiding another conflagration is narrowing.
Nimrod Novik was the policy adviser and special envoy to Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel. He is a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum and a member of the leadership of Commanders for Israel’s Security.
Source photographs by Sean Gallup and Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
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