U.S. President Donald Trump placed the blame for slow progress on the Gaza peace plan squarely on one party: Hamas.
After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday, the U.S. president said at his second press conference of the day that Israel has “lived up to the plan 100%.”
“I’m not concerned about anything that Israel is doing,” Trump said. “I’m concerned about what other people are doing, or maybe aren’t doing. But I’m not concerned. They’ve lived up to the plan.”
Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former British ambassador to Yemen, told JNS on Monday that the view that Trump articulated about Israel contrasts sharply with how U.S. partners like Qatar and Turkey have portrayed events to the president.
“Netanyahu has succeeded in landing that point and has got a renewed American commitment that they understand that Hamas has been the problem over moving on with the Gaza plan and they expect Hamas to do better,” Fitton-Brown told JNS.
“The big test, of course, for the U.S. now is to go to the Turks and to the Qataris and say, ‘You’ve been blowing smoke at us, and Hamas is not cooperating, and you have to try harder to deliver them,’” he said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed Israel repeatedly for violating the ceasefire agreement with Hamas for “made-up” reasons.
“Israel is not keeping its word and is constantly creating difficulties and obstacles to the entry of humanitarian aid with fabricated excuses,” Erdogan said last week.
Trump said at the second press conference on Monday that he was with Erdogan “all the way” and that the Turkish leader is “a very good friend.”
“I do respect him, and Bibi respects him, and they’re not going to have a problem,” Trump said, of the Israeli and Turkish leaders.
Netanyahu made no comment about Erdogan.
Fitton-Brown told JNS that Israel is in a “tricky” position with Qatar and Turkey, which like Israel are both U.S. allies.
“Both countries have now emerged as clear enemies of Israel,” Fitton-Brown said. “Both of them are pursuing energetic anti-Israeli policies, pro-Hamas policies. Both of them are actually pursuing energetic anti-Western policies—support for the Muslim Brotherhood, support for subversion of Western democracy, penetration of the U.S. education sector, the U.S. media sector,” he said.
“Trump said, ‘Oh, Turkey they’ve been good friends to us’ and this is Trump reminding Netanyahu that the U.S. has a much wider range of equities than Israel does,” Fitton-Brown told JNS.
“The U.S. is a superpower. It’s a global power, and it has to take seriously how it manages all of its relationships,” he said. “Netanyahu will understand that.”
Both Netanyahu and Trump alluded to areas of difference between their two countries about regional questions while stressing that the two allies are largely aligned. Trump said that “there’s very little difference in what we’re looking at,” and Netanyahu described the meeting as “very productive.”
“Sometimes we have different ideas, but we work it out,” Netanyahu said.
One area that has emerged as a distinct point of difference between Israel and the United States is Syria, where Trump has removed sanctions and met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in the White House.
Israel has repeatedly conducted military operations over the Syrian border, and one member of the Israeli cabinet has publicly called for al-Sharaa to be assassinated and has said that war with Syria is “inevitable.”
Trump alluded to al-Sharaa’s past membership in al-Qaeda and his former designation on a U.S. terrorism list at the press conference with Netanyahu on Monday.
“That’s what you need in Syria. You can’t put a choir boy,” Trump said. “I’m sure that Israel and him will get along. I will try and make it so that they do get along.”
Netanyahu instead focused on the need for security along Israel’s northern border and the protection of Syria’s religious minorities, including the Druze, of which there is a large cross-border population between the two countries.
“We want to make sure that the area right next to our border is safe,” Netanyahu said. “We don’t have terrorists. We don’t have attacks.”
Fitton-Brown told JNS that from the Israeli perspective, Syria is “full of risk and danger” but “opportunity as well.”
“This is going to be one where Israel needs to make sure that it’s not portrayed as ‘the spoiler,’ the country that causes Syria to fail,” he said. “Syria may fail anyway, but it’d be much more convenient for Israel if that failure is partly down to, for example, excessive Turkish pressure on al-Sharaa to crush the Kurds, which al-Sharaa is either unwilling to do, or if he tries to do it, it fractures any sense of him as as a national leader.”
“I think Netanyahu will know that he needs to play this very cleverly and not to stand there, as it were, with a broken Syria in front of him and it was obvious it was his doing,” Fitton-Brown said. “Syria is clearly not ready for normalization, but it may be that something could be achieved in terms of an understanding between the two countries.”
Trump said that he and Netanyahu also do not see eye-to-eye on Judea and Samaria, with some members of Netanyahu’s Likud party calling on him to annex the territories into Israel proper.
“We had discussion, a big discussion, for a long time on the West Bank, and I wouldn’t say we agree on the West Bank 100%,” Trump said. “But we will come to a conclusion on the West Bank.”
Trump declined to say what the disagreement entailed, adding that any developments would “be announced at an appropriate time.”
“He will do the right thing. I know that,” Trump said of Netanyahu. “I know him very well. He will do the right thing.”
