It seems like it’s impossible for United States President Donald Trump to give public statements without a few cringeworthy moments.
Those moments occurred a couple of times during Monday’s joint appearance with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, where the two met to discuss the critical issues of the future of Gaza and the return of the Iranian threat.
As The Jerusalem Post’s Amichai Stein and Herb Keinon have pointed out this week, part of the meeting’s goals were to boost both leaders’ standing domestically. And Trump didn’t hold back in praising Netanyahu to the hilt, to the hyperbolic level of claiming that Israel might have been destroyed over the last two years if Netanyahu weren’t in power.
“He’s done a phenomenal job. He’s taken Israel through a very dangerous period of trauma. Israel, with other people, might not exist right now. They were met with a force the likes of which not many countries could have handled. We worked together, and we were extremely victorious, to put it mildly,” said Trump, standing next to Netanyahu.
Then, after falsely claiming that all of the hostages in Gaza were released from Hamas captivity when he was president, Trump continued to meddle in Israeli internal affairs by again spouting about a pardon for the criminally accused Netanyahu, who is in the midst of a prolonged trial.
“He’s a wartime prime minister who’s a hero. How do you not give a pardon?” said Trump, adding that he “spoke to the president, [Isaac Herzog], and he tells me it’s on its way. You can’t do better than that, right?”
Herzog was forced to deny that he had been in touch with Trump after Netanyahu officially requested it from the Israeli president last month.
However, those inappropriate moments aimed at propping up a prime minister facing formidable domestic issues back home were dwarfed in comparison to the more substantive elements that Trump addressed.
It was here that he demonstrated that there is very little daylight between the views of the US and Israel regarding the major issues: the continuation of the Gaza peace plan and of the indications that Iran is rebuilding militarily.
Little daylight between US, Israel on major issues
Regarding the former, Trump made it clear that phase two of the Gaza plan was totally contingent on the disarmament of Hamas, a precondition that Israel has insisted on.
“If they don’t disarm [in a very short period of time] as they agreed to do... then there will be hell to pay for them,” said Trump, adding that Israel had kept all of its obligations under the Gaza plan.
Regarding Iran, Trump was even more unequivocally in Israel’s corner.
Even if Iran moves only to restore its ballistic missile program, not its nuclear one, he is prepared to support a swift strike, he said. This is a significant change in policy, which until now drew a redline on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Trump declared that the distinction of advancing its non-nuclear military capabilities while staying below the nuclear threshold is also a redline, something Netanyahu was pushing for.
Of course, gaps remain between the two countries. Although Trump was bullish about the next phase in Gaza beginning “very soon,” the issues of the return of the final hostage, Ran Gvili, and exactly which nations are agreeing to be part of his International Stabilization Forces (ISF) and if they will be tasked with disarming Hamas, are still on the table.
Likewise, there is the issue of whether Turkey, whose leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump praised during his remarks, will be part of the ISF over Israeli objections. And regarding Syria, Trump is still pushing for a highly wary Israel to make nice with Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
He said Sharaa “has been with us all the way,” and “I’m sure that Israel and him will get along. I will try and make it so that they do get along.”
Despite those real differences that will pose challenges in the near future, the Mar-a-Lago summit can only be seen as a triumph for Netanyahu and Israel for the consensus items of a Hamas-free Gaza and a defanged Iran. At this juncture in time, those are the issues that matter the most.