US President Donald Trump, (right), looks on as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Knesset in Jerusalem on October 13. A new phase in the countries' relationship has been taking form. Photo / Kenny Holston, The New York Times
The parade of Trump Administration officials to Jerusalem over the past week to ensure Benjamin Netanyahu sticks to the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip drew a catchy shorthand in the Israeli news media, playing on the Prime Minister’s nickname: “Bibi-sitting”.
Beyond the supposed adult supervision being given to a sovereign ally, however, was a more striking change.
A distinct new phase in the United States-Israel relationship is being cemented, particularly in the relationship between the two countries’ leaders.
In President Donald Trump’s first term, he showered Netanyahu with political gifts, including recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and recognising Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
Early in his current term, too, Trump indulged Netanyahu, briefly feeding right-wing Israelis’ fantasies of depopulating and developing the Gaza Strip as a Middle Eastern “Riviera”.
He then backed Netanyahu in March when he broke a ceasefire with Hamas. And he delivered an entirely new level of support to Israel by deploying B-2 bombers to strike Iran’s nuclear sites in June.
“The term used in Israel was that he works for us,” Reuven Hazan, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said of Trump.
“Everybody thought that Trump was mouthing words that Bibi wrote for him.”
That is no longer the case.
Rather, Trump has increasingly aired his frustrations with Netanyahu.
One early example was Trump’s eruption at the Prime Minister over an Israeli airstrike on Iran in June after a ceasefire had been reached in that 12-day war.
After Israel’s botched airstrike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar in September, Trump, meeting with Netanyahu in the Oval Office, forced him to call the Qatari Prime Minister and apologise.
Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, elaborated in a 60 Minutes interview on October 20.
“I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing,” Kushner said.
“And that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests.”
It was an extraordinary revelation by Kushner, who indicated that Trump believed he was acting in Israel’s interests and that Netanyahu was not.
Trump went on to push Netanyahu into agreeing to his Gaza peace plan — including an acknowledgment of Palestinian aspirations to statehood, which the Israeli leader adamantly opposes.
A day later, Trump told Axios: “He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine.”
For all of his tough talk towards Netanyahu, Trump and his aides remain supportive of Israel, as he demonstrated abundantly on his trip to Jerusalem this month.
And he continues to threaten Hamas with harsh action if it fails to meet its commitment to return all the bodies of Israelis — though in a social media post at the weekend, he made it clear that “other countries” would be the ones to “take action” against Hamas if it did not comply.
Israelis have begun to question how long the US will keep up the pressure if Trump shows signs of losing interest.
“He doesn’t have staying power,” Hazan said.
“He can’t continue to be the Bibi-sitter. And he can’t continue having people flying in. The question is: Who will break first?”
The President hasn’t just asserted his dominance over Netanyahu in relation to Gaza.
Trump told reporters in mid-October that when it comes to a potential two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, “I will decide what I think is right”.
And in an interview with Time magazine, Trump was asked whether he believed Marwan Barghouti, a popular Palestinian figure convicted in 2004 on terrorism charges for his role in attacks that killed five people, should be released from an Israeli prison.
Barghouti was not among the 250 Palestinian prisoners serving long sentences whom Israel released in a trade for hostages held in Gaza.
Trump said he had just been discussing the idea of releasing Barghouti, adding, “I’ll be making a decision”.
I, he said again. Not we.
Trump has also rejected, in increasingly emphatic terms, the idea that Israel would annex parts of the occupied West Bank.
This is a long-standing goal of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners and one that has gained support since a host of countries recognised Palestinian statehood in September.
“It will not happen,” Trump said in the Time interview. “Israel would lose all of its support from the US if that happened.”
The US effort to sustain the truce in Gaza appears to have constrained Netanyahu as well.
On the ground, Israeli officials are accustoming themselves to a new arrangement in which US counterparts appear to be taking a more assertive role in maintaining the ceasefire.
When Israel threatened to stop all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza after two of its soldiers were killed on October 19, the order was reversed within hours, and trucks carried aid into Gaza the next day.
Israeli news media attributed the reversal to US intervention.
The details of that arrangement are taking shape at a new Civil-Military Co-ordination Centre, set up by about 200 US military personnel in Kiryat Gat, in southern Israel.
Both US Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio toured the centre last week.
US military officials said the centre would monitor the fulfilment of the ceasefire agreement and help facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance from international counterparts into Gaza.
The US has even begun operating drones over Gaza, suggesting that officials want to have their own understanding, independent of Israel’s, of what is happening.
It is all quite a bit for Israelis to process.
It was not so long ago that Netanyahu plastered giant campaign billboards on skyscrapers in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv showing his face alongside Trump’s, with a slogan proclaiming him in “another league”.
Now, Netanyahu appears diminished in stature next to the President, Hazan said, like the governor of a state rather than the leader of a country.
A survey by Israel’s public broadcaster yesterday found that 48% of Israelis believed Israel had become a “US protectorate”. Only 29% disagreed.
In remarks to his Cabinet, Netanyahu felt compelled to address the issue head-on.
“Israel is an independent country,” he said, repeating himself moments later.
That he had to say so — twice — was its own admission.
It is a far cry from the days when Netanyahu seemed to revel in his battles with US presidents and often won them.
He defied President Joe Biden, saying Israelis would “fight with our fingernails” if Biden cut off arms shipments.
He defied President Barack Obama by addressing Congress to denounce Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
And he enraged President Bill Clinton so much that Clinton asked, in memorably salty terms, just whose country was the superpower.
Israel is heading into an election year, though the date of the vote is not yet known.
Trump is now making it clear that he can pose a threat to the Prime Minister.
“I think Bibi understands better than Trump that Trump can undermine his electoral prospects with one social post,” said Nimrod Novik, who was an adviser to former Prime Minister Shimon Peres and is now a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum.
“The moment Trump distances himself from him — either by saying, ‘This guy is bad news,’ or even more softly, by saying, ‘I will work equally closely with any Israeli prime minister’ — that’s enough to affect things.”
Which raises a somewhat fanciful but nonetheless intriguing question.
If Netanyahu’s political weakness, Trump’s outsize popularity among Israeli voters and the US drive for a peace agreement all endure, might Netanyahu conclude that the key to his political survival is not blocking a Palestinian state, but making one possible?
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: David M. Halbfinger
Photographs by: Kenny Holston, Saher Alghorra, Nathan Howard
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