If US President Donald Trump’s first week in office is indicative of what his second term has in store, Israel should get ready for the following: supportive steps in full public view and significant pressure behind closed doors.
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this duality will present a challenge. Obviously, the supportive steps will be applauded – such as several executive orders Trump signed this week that benefit Israel’s interests.
These include lifting the sanctions former president Joe Biden imposed on settlers accused of violence against Palestinians and on pro-settlement organizations such as Amana; reinstating sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) that Biden lifted; paving the path for defunding UNRWA; laying the foundation for deporting foreign nationals in the US who support Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations; and redesignating the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, a designation the Biden administration reversed when it first came into office.
Together, these steps signal to Israel and its adversaries that Trump will continue with many of the staunchly pro-Israel policies that marked his first term, even as his appointment of some isolationists to key Mideast positions is raising some eyebrows.
The most prominent of these is Michael DiMino, a critic of Israel who believes the US should reduce its presence in the region, who is replacing Dan Shapiro as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy.
Notwithstanding some problematic appointments, Trump’s lifting sanctions on settlers and pro-settlement organizations signals a return to his previous position of not delegitimizing the settlement movement, a position articulated by former secretary of state Mike Pompeo in 2019 when he said, following a State Department review, that “the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”
By reinstating the sanctions on the ICC, Trump is signaling that his administration will, as it did last time, take a much more confrontational approach to international bodies targeting Israel and shield it from potential war crimes investigations.
The executive order paving the way for defunding UNRWA is also a throwback to Trump’s first term, where aid to the Palestinians was conditional on behavior rather than automatic.
Preparing the ground for deporting foreign nationals who support Hezbollah and Hamas suggests a much tougher stance against the extreme anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric that erupted on college campuses and elsewhere on October 7.
Finally, redesignating the Houthis as a terrorist organization underscores Trump’s intolerance for a band of terrorists that took over half of Yemen, holds international shipping hostage, thereby driving up global inflation, and strikes out at Israel – as well as in the past Saudi Arabia and the UAE – whenever the spirit moves it.
Each step alone is significant, even more so when seen as a package. And this doesn’t even include another step expected to be taken shortly: releasing for delivery 2,000-pound bombs that the Biden administration had held up since the spring.
But make no mistake: this does not mean the Trump administration is in lockstep with Netanyahu and his government. It is not.
In fact, the pressure Trump exerted on Netanyahu through his Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, to go through with the hostage deal – despite its ramifications for Netanyahu’s coalition – shows that when it comes to what Trump views as his or America’s interests, Netanyahu’s political problems don’t concern him all that much.
OVER THE years, Netanyahu has consistently portrayed himself as able – perhaps alone among Israeli political leaders – to withstand international pressure, including pressure from the US.
During the eight years when his tenure overlapped with that of president Barack Obama, this willingness to stand up to the US president, withstand pressure from the White House, and even speak against the president’s Iranian nuclear deal in front of a joint session of the US Congress, was a selling point he took back to the electorate.
And it worked. His base values a leader willing to confront even the US president when Israeli interests are at stake. Netanyahu has repeated this claim in recent months, emphasizing his decisions to enter Rafah and deploy troops into southern Lebanon despite global and American pushback.
What often made it possible for Netanyahu to stand up to US presidents in the past were the allies he had in the opposing party in Congress.
For six years of Obama’s eight-year tenure, there was a divided government, meaning that the Democrats controlled the presidency, but the Republicans controlled either the House or the Senate or – from 2015 to 2017 – both the House and the Senate. When Obama pursued a policy Netanyahu deemed inimical to Israel’s interests, he could always go to Republican allies in the Senate and try to thwart it.
The same was true to a lesser degree with Biden, whose Democratic Party held the Senate but not the House over the last two years.
Now, however, Netanyahu is facing a Republican president who controls both the Senate and the House. This shift limits Netanyahu’s ability to bypass the White House by appealing to allies in Congress.
Under Obama, Republican lawmakers readily backed Netanyahu in head-to-head disputes with the president. Those same senators will find it much more difficult to back Netanyahu if he gets into a diplomatic row with Trump.
Conversely, Netanyahu cannot count on support from Democratic lawmakers, many of whom dislike him as much as – or even more than – they dislike Trump.
THIS RAISES a crucial question: Can Netanyahu say “no” to Trump when their interests diverge?
So far, it doesn’t appear that this will be easy.
Consider the hostage deal, which Witkoff – in the name of Trump – claimed credit for implementing, though it closely resembles a proposal Biden approved back in May. According to numerous reports, the deal is happening now because of pressure that the US was placing not on Hamas – unmoved by the pressure – or on Qatar, with which Witkoff has close business ties, but on Netanyahu.
And this pressure shows no sign of letting up. Witkoff announced on Fox News on Wednesday that he plans to visit Israel and Gaza to oversee the deal’s implementation and launch negotiations for a second phase aimed at securing the release of all hostages and removing the IDF from Gaza.
Even though he will be going to the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors, Witkoff is not coming here to pressure Hamas; rather, he is going to keep an eye on Netanyahu to ensure that – despite pronouncements by ministers that the second phase of the deal will never materialize – everything goes ahead as planned.
Witkoff, who during the Fox interview singled out Qatar for praise and indicated Washington would be willing to hold a dialogue with Hamas about “everything,” aims to guarantee the hostage deal progresses, the second-phase talks begin, and – it appears – ensure that Israel does not take actions that might disrupt the process.
Why? Because Trump wants this war – as he said repeatedly on the campaign trail – resolved quickly. He wants the hostages home and the war ended so he can focus on issues more important to his heart, such as immigration, China, and overhauling the federal government.
Ending the war also aligns with Trump’s broader goal of expanding the Abraham Accords through Israeli-Saudi normalization.
“I think this is an inflection point,” Witkoff said
Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor, echoed this sentiment earlier this month, calling Saudi-Israeli normalization a “huge priority” for the administration and a “tremendous, historic, region-changing agreement.”
However, a Saudi-Israeli deal remains distant. One of Saudi Arabia’s conditions for normalization is a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood – a prospect Netanyahu and most Israelis currently oppose.
If the administration does pursue this issue, it is fair to assume it would place more pressure on Israel to change its position than on the Saudis, fearing that alienating Riyadh could push the kingdom toward China. There is no similar fear that Israel may pivot away from the US.
This scenario, however, is not in the immediate works. A more immediate scenario where Jerusalem might feel pressure from the new administration is now unfolding regarding Lebanon.
According to an Army Radio report on Thursday, the Trump administration is pushing the IDF to withdraw from Lebanon by Sunday, as called for in the ceasefire agreement.
The IDF has indicated that it cannot complete the withdrawal on time, because the Lebanese Army has not – as spelled out under the accord – taken over Hezbollah’s positions in southern Lebanon. While the Biden administration was willing to grant a 30-day extension, the Trump team seems less inclined to do so.
This position should come as no surprise. At the end of October, as Trump was vying for Arab votes in Michigan and elsewhere, he penned a letter addressed to Lebanese Americans in which he said he would “fix the problems caused by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and stop the suffering and destruction in Lebanon.”
“I look forward to working with the Lebanese community living in the United States of America to ensure the safety and security of the great people of Lebanon,” he wrote.
As supportive as Trump is of Israel, the two countries are separate states with interests that, while they often overlap, sometimes do not. When they don’t, it will be telling to see whether Netanyahu can stand up to Trump the same way he took pride in standing up to his Democratic predecessors.