Is Trump intent on delivering a Palestinian state?

Photo: AP Images

D

uring an interview last week with the Jerusalem Post, Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, advised how Israel supporters should respond to the flood of news reports on the implementation of President Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza.

“[With] a little less hysteria and a little more sobriety,” he suggested, adding that we need to wait six months to see how things unfold.

Judging by the initial stories at the beginning of the week, no one followed Leiter’s advice. The media reacted with frenzy to the joint statement from the United Nations Office of Press and Public Diplomacy released in America after Shabbos began in Israel. Eight Arab and Muslim nations signed the US text, which states that the UN mandate for an International Security Force in Gaza over the next two years is “a comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict... [that] offers a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”

This wording was part of the US resolution submitted to the UN Security Council for a vote on Monday, after we went to press.

The Israeli media universally cast this as a betrayal. The headline in Israel Hayom’s Hebrew-language edition shouted: “Worse than Obama: Trump’s move is destructive for Israel as Netanyahu remains silent.” The English-language version removed the phrase: “Worse than Obama,” although its senior diplomatic and White House correspondent, Ariel Kahana, didn’t mince words, noting that the Trump administration’s explicit mention of Palestinian statehood in a UN resolution went further than President Obama ever did at the UN. The resolution ties statehood to reforms by the Palestinian Authority but doesn’t specify which reforms or who will oversee them.

YNET’s military correspondent Ronen Bergman cited senior defense officials who say the proposed sale of F-35 stealth bombers to Saudi Arabia could threaten Israel’s air superiority and restrict its operational freedom. The official claims the US is already boxing Israel in: “We’re entirely dependent on the US for responding to military provocations or going to war.”

Finally, Channel 13 reported that if no one steps forward to commit troops to patrol Gaza and oversee Hamas’s disarmament, Trump might skip that step and go directly to rebuilding Gaza, which Israel strongly objects to as long as Hamas remains a threat.

Yechiel Leiter might tell everyone to chill, and that we’ll all be wiser in six months.

He may be right, but Israel should have seen this coming long ago.

The Real Deal

President Trump has never explicitly supported a two-state solution or an independent Palestinian state, unless you interpret this UN resolution as such.

Like his predecessors in the Oval Office, he generally disapproved of any dramatic Israeli expansion in Judea and Samaria. Less than a month after taking office in 2017, he told Prime Minister Netanyahu to “hold back on settlements for a little bit.”

Last month, Trump took a tougher stance, telling Time magazine he opposed Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria: “It won’t happen because I gave my word to Arab countries,” and added, “Israel would lose all of its support if it happened.”

None of this should be surprising. The “Deal of the Century” that Trump introduced in January 2020 with Bibi at his side was loaded with concessions to the Palestinians. It called for a $50 billion investment over 10 years “to build a prosperous and vibrant Palestinian society,” explicitly recognized “the State of Palestine as the nation-state of the Palestinian people,” noted that “the sovereign capital of the State of Palestine should be in the section of East Jerusalem located in all areas east and north of the existing security barrier,” called on Israel “to make a significant territorial compromise that will enable the Palestinians to have a viable state,” and proposed easing travel so that “the State of Palestine will benefit from a high-speed transportation link that will enable efficient movement between the West Bank and Gaza, crossing over or under the State of Israel’s sovereign territory.”

The Abraham Accords ultimately replaced the “Deal of the Century,” but just imagine what October 7, 2023 might have turned into if Hamas had been able to move “efficiently” between Gaza and the West Bank.

Less Help. More Resolve

It should be clear that the Trump administration, which views foreign policy through a transactional lens, sees greater economic potential and investment opportunities in the Arab world than in Israel. Trade with the Arab world doesn’t have to come at Israel’s expense. In 2024, US trade with Israel in goods and services totaled $55 billion, nearly 40% of the $141 billion the US traded in the Middle East and North Africa, but Trump is setting new priorities, along with his top two Middle East envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who are more than knee-deep in personal business transactions with the Arab world.

Trump also believes he can reshape the Middle East through his personality, deal-making skills, and by pressuring Israel and Arab nations to cooperate. That will take time. The relationships between Israel and the countries that signed the Abraham Accords under Trump are still evolving. Even if Saudi Arabia joins, its cooperation with Israel will be gradual.

Trump also sees Israel as a military power that has proven it can fend for itself — and one day, with less American help. Prime Minister Netanyahu shares the goal of reducing Israel’s military reliance on the US, but that will require careful, long-term planning. It won’t happen overnight, and it will be much harder on Israel if the small land area it already has shrinks further.

Prime Minister Netanyahu put his foot down at the start of Sunday’s cabinet meeting, reminding those who believe he has already caved to Trump that his opposition to a Palestinian state in any territory west of the Jordan River is intact.

“I have been rebuffing these attempts for decades, and I am doing it both against pressures from outside and against pressures from within. So, I do not need affirmations, tweets, or lectures from anyone.”

Bibi reiterated his position that there is no skipping steps when it comes to Gaza. “This territory will be demilitarized, and Hamas will be disarmed. Either this will happen the easy way, or it will happen the hard way. This is what I said, and this is what President Trump also said.”

While Bibi continues to portray the situation as smooth and coordinated with Trump, support for a Palestinian state is growing, and Israel will face both political challenges and possibly military confrontations to prevent it from happening.

Israel must steel itself to reject pressure to sign deals that benefit other parties far more than they benefit them, and to prevent pushing the Middle East further away from real peace and stability. —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1087)