Perhaps for the first time, Netanyahu returned from his White House visit stronger than when he left

Photo: AP Images

Israelis watching the impromptu joint press conference in the Oval Office last Tuesday couldn’t help but wonder if they were dreaming, and not just because it dragged on well past midnight, Israel time.

President Donald Trump, in a two-hour-long meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, laid out his plan for the voluntary emigration of Gaza residents and an American takeover of the Strip. Anyone who closely watched Netanyahu’s body language at the press conference will have noticed that he seemed more amused than surprised.

Netanyahu boarded the plane to Washington in deep trouble. Itamar Ben-Gvir’s resignation had forced Bezalel Smotrich to tack right by clarifying that if the war isn’t renewed, he’ll not only resign from the government but actively bring it down.

Historically, Netanyahu’s Washington visits have been ill fated. In his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu lost his government majority on his return from the Wye Plantation talks. At the time, Netanyahu tried to reverse course before his plane had even landed, but the right-wing tribe wasn’t having it, and his government collapsed.

During Trump’s first term, Netanyahu boarded his return flight with an American commitment to recognize Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria in his pocket.

“We’ll pass the decision in the government tomorrow,” Netanyahu told me at the time, but we were still in the air when the “don’t” from the White House forced him to backtrack and pull back the measure.

Even from his most dramatic visit yet, after his 2015 Congressional address regarding the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration, Bibi returned with a black eye. He’d managed to win back his base, leading to an unexpected victory in that year’s Knesset election, but not without running afoul of a vindictive American president. Even without spending 13 and a half hours in the air, as he did this time, Bibi has always been under a “travel warning” ahead of the visit’s consequences once he lands back in Israel.

“One week of quiet” was all Netanyahu needed from his coalition partners, and he got it — for the most part. The chareidim quieted down, but Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich refused to fall in line, declaring that he wouldn’t allow a pullback from the Philadelphi Corridor. Netanyahu was infuriated.

In the past, Netanyahu has wielded his right-wing partners’ posturing as an excuse in meetings with American presidents, but with Trump, everything is different. This president divides the world between winners and losers, drawing close anyone he perceives as a winner and pushing away anyone stained with the faintest whiff of loserdom.

“What happened to Bibi? How did he become a loser?” Trump reportedly wondered during Netanyahu’s January 2020 visit, after the Israeli prime minister had failed to secure a majority in two snap elections in a row.

This time, Bibi wanted to come to Trump as head of a stable government. The quiet back home was intended to give Trump the impression of a prime minister in his prime, rather than one counting down the days to his government’s collapse.

Bibi couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. Perhaps for the first time, Netanyahu returned from his White House visit stronger than when he left. Trump’s comments, which to the Israeli right sounded like the footsteps of Mashiach, would have been considered extreme in Israel two weeks ago — the type of comment that gets a politician banned from running for office by the High Court.

Trump’s total sympathy with Israel’s positions, and especially his support for Netanyahu, allowed Bibi to start the week on the right foot. Smotrich, whose future in the coalition was previously in doubt, clarified that he’ll do everything to strengthen Bibi’s hand to take full advantage of Trump’s dream opportunity. Ben-Gvir also seems on course to rejoin the government. For the moment, it actually seems both Israel and the United States have fully right-wing governments.

“Statements are important, but we’ll have to wait and see how this translates into action,” Otzma Yehudit chair Itamar Ben Gvir told me, as Bibi tries to reel him back into the coalition.

The Israeli right is fed up with grandiose announcements. Case in point: the judicial reform, which started out with a bang, only to die out with a whimper.

But Trump came to Bibi’s aid there, too, even after the meeting. As far-fetched as they seem, Trump’s tweets later about Israel completing the war and handing control of Gaza to the Americans allow Netanyahu to retain the right’s support without resuming the war in the short term.

What will Trump do? That’s the million-dollar question that no one in the Israeli political system has an answer to. Though the president was reading from a prepared statement at the press conference, he hadn’t discussed the details with his aides ahead of time, and most of them were worked out during the meeting with Netanyahu.

Some in Netanyahu’s circle were reminded of how first-term Trump floated the idea of Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria as leverage for the Abraham Accords. Faced with global outcry, Trump soon dropped the idea, instead using the concession to get the Gulf States to make peace with Israel while leaving the Palestinian issue unresolved.

In Israel, this is known as the “goat” negotiation tactic (after the famous parable involving the rabbi’s advice to the chassid with a cramped home) — an outrageous proposal to make one’s real position seem like the reasonable middle ground. Trump has already proven that no one has better instincts than he when it comes to making deals. To Israel’s fortune, Trump has chosen repeatedly to push the goat into the Palestinian refugee tent rather than the Israeli mamad.

The Scoop

If I Were Trump

Netanyahu has always been jealous of American presidents, maybe out of the sense that if he’d been born an American, he might have come to the White House as a tenant rather than a mere guest. On the return flight from Washington, I once heard him compare the splendor of the White House to the dinginess of the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem.

On this trip, the contrast was even more glaring in light of the closure of Trump’s legal cases and his dismissal of hostile Justice Department officials, even as Bibi returned from Washington to the Jerusalem District Court to continue his testimony. And if that isn’t enough, his wife, who recently returned home from a long vacation, will also be summoned for questioning soon. Of all the powers at the American president’s disposal, Bibi is surely most envious of Trump's legal immunity.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1049)