After a rambunctious week, the US and Israel must close ranks, rebuild mutual trust, and drop all the failed misconceptions of the past

Photo: Flash90

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or two years, we’ve been reading how Israel was a victim of its own “conceptzia” for assuming they successfully deterred their enemies and misinterpreting clear warning signs before Hamas’s October 7 invasion.

Judging from a series of jarring public statements US officials have made, starting with President Trump and then the caravan of top officials he dispatched to Israel last week, America, too, is parroting the same long-standing misconceptions from previous administrations that are more likely to hinder peace instead of promoting it.

Let’s review the statements chronologically, evaluate the harm they caused, and suggest more constructive ways of thinking.

Shortly after the 20 living hostages returned safely, Hamas violated the ceasefire, attacking an IDF position in Gaza and killing two soldiers. The IDF held Hamas directly responsible for the attack. President Trump identified the perpetrators as a “rebel force,” telling the White House press corps: “As you know, they’ve been quite rambunctious. They’ve been doing some shooting, and we think maybe the leadership isn’t involved in that.”

That same night, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, criticizing Israel’s attack on Hamas’s top leadership in Qatar.

“I just feel that we felt a little bit betrayed,” Witkoff said. Kushner added: “I think he [Trump] felt like the Israelis were getting a little out of control in what they were doing, and it was time to be very strong to stop them from doing things that were not in their long-term interests.”

Later on, Kushner said the main message the US conveyed to the Israeli leadership is: “Now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better.”

Vice President J.D. Vance arrived in Israel two days later to push forward Trump’s 20-point peace plan, declaring he hadn’t come to monitor the ceasefire “in the sense of, you know, [like] you monitor a toddler.”

His parting shot, before he flew back to Washington, was to label the Knesset’s 25-24 vote to apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria “a very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult to it. The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”
Trump himself hammered the same point home. He might have lost out on the Nobel Peace Prize, but he’s still in the running for Time magazine’s Man of the Year. Trump gave Time a lengthy interview in which he took sovereignty off the table. “It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries,” and “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”

No Excuses for Terror

Israel isn’t about to defy Trump and risk losing US military aid and diplomatic support, nor will the US benefit from cutting off Israel and forfeiting valuable military cooperation and intelligence sources.

Both sides are testing how far they can push each other without causing a crisis. Two headstrong and ego-driven men like Trump and Netanyahu are bound to clash.

Last week’s noise was mainly the Trump administration’s effort to maintain the upper hand. To their credit, Israeli officials didn’t lash back, at least publicly, at these verbal barrages.

Nevertheless, in the short term, relations have become choppy, and Israelis, who have suffered two years of a multifront war, have every right to be on edge.

When Trump blames “rebel forces” for killing Israeli soldiers and avoids holding Hamas leadership accountable, he is following the Clinton-Rabin-Peres playbook, which blamed the “enemies of peace” for the wave of terror the Palestinian Authority unleashed on Israel’s streets right after the Oslo Accords, as if the PA leadership had no culpability. When the president excuses Hamas gangs conducting revenge killings against rival gangs in Gaza as “rambunctious,” as if they were a bunch of rowdy boys out for a night on the town, it emboldens Hamas to believe that the efforts to disarm them and demilitarize Gaza, which is the next phase of Trump’s 20-point plan, are not serious.

Kushner’s efforts to shift the responsibility onto Israel to “make life easier” for the Palestinians are also rooted in the failed Oslo paradigm. The Palestinian Authority and its predecessor, the Palestine Liberation Organization, have made life difficult for Israel, murdering nearly 5,000 Jews in various terrorist attacks since 1948. The Jerusalem-based NGO Palestinian Media Watch reported last week that 160 of the 250 Palestinian terrorists serving life terms who Israel released in exchange for the 20 hostages are now millionaires, in shekels, thanks to 229 million shekels in PA pay-for-slay payments. This sum does not include additional stipends the PA paid to their spouses and children. Wouldn’t that money have gone a long way toward making life easier for the Palestinians if spent on honorable causes?

No More Fake Peace

Vice President Vance’s remark about not coming here to monitor the ceasefire like a babysitter watches over a toddler seemed condescending. If the administration wants to trust Hamas, that’s their choice, but Israel has no room for error and must show zero tolerance for even minor violations. As for getting upset because 25 out of 120 MKs voted for the sovereignty bill when he was in Israel, it was a bill sponsored by a rogue Knesset member from a one-man party. It didn’t warrant a harsh response. Perhaps Vance forgot that just a few weeks ago, both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ambassador Mike Huckabee said it would be Israel’s decision to make on sovereignty, and that the US wouldn’t tell Israel what to do.

Okay, so the policy shifted when Trump struck a deal with Arab nations at last month’s UN General Assembly to block sovereignty in exchange for their support of his ceasefire plan, but Israel has the right to feel frustrated by Trump’s unilateral move. By pandering to the Arab and Muslim world, which uses the Palestinian issue as a wedge to keep Israel on the defensive, the administration is falling into the same trap that every US administration has fallen into since Israel captured Judea and Samaria from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Peace won’t come to the Middle East if Israel withdraws from Judea and Samaria to create a Palestinian state that would threaten Israel and Jordan, and muddle efforts to stabilize Lebanon and Syria, if that’s even possible. Peace also won’t come by virtue of an artificial entity created in Gaza, propped up by a coalition of “reformed” Palestinians and “demilitarized” Hamas-niks, and definitely not through a multinational force funded by Qatar and Turkey.

Peace is desirable, but it isn’t always doable, certainly not when based on hasty, half-baked, unenforceable measures.

After a rambunctious week, the US and Israel must close ranks, rebuild mutual trust, and drop all the failed misconceptions of the past.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1084)