To get a glimpse of what to expect when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets US President Donald Trump on Tuesday in the Oval Office, it’s instructive to look back eight years at their first White House meeting.
That meeting took place on February 15—then, as now—within a month of the president’s inauguration. One major difference, beyond the obvious massive changes in the region since then, is that at the time, Netanyahu was at his strongest.
Consider this: in February and March 2017 alone, Netanyahu traveled not only to the US to meet Trump but also to Britain, Singapore, Australia, Russia, and China. As a sign of his influence, he met the presidents of the three leading powers in the world—US, Russia, and China—all within two months.
His current trip, by contrast, is the first time he has left the country since last September, when he addressed the UN General Assembly. The International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him now complicates his ability to travel abroad in ways that were unthinkable back then.
Also, at the time of that first meeting, police investigations into his alleged wrongdoing had only just begun two months earlier. He had no trials hanging over his head and was firmly in control of a solid right-wing coalition that held 66 seats in the Knesset.
Much has changed since then. One thing, however, that remains the same is the expectation that the new US president’s Middle East policies will diverge significantly from those of his predecessor—it’s just a question of how.
Trump wasted no time signaling his approach back then.
One of his first moves at a press conference with Netanyahu was to break with the two-state orthodoxy of the previous three administrations. Asked whether he was ready to abandon the two-state framework in favor of other ideas, he replied:
“I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one.”
Challenging diplomatic conventions
Expect him on Tuesday to once again challenge diplomatic conventions—this time by reviving the idea of Jordan and Egypt, and perhaps some other countries—taking in Gazan refugees as a way to enable Gaza’s reconstruction. Just as his willingness in 2017 to consider alternatives to the two-state solution marked a departure from past US policy, this proposal does the same. He has done it before; he can do it again.
His second move at that press conference with Netanyahu in 2017 was to widen the lens, shifting the conversation from a narrow Israeli-Palestinian agreement to a broader regional deal. His argument was simple: by expanding the scope of a future agreement, Israel could afford to be more flexible, since the potential benefits of this wider accord would outweigh the risks Israel would take by making certain concessions to the Palestinians.
“The Israelis are gonna have to show some flexibility, which is hard, it’s hard to do,” Trump said. “They’re gonna have to show the fact that they really want to make a deal. I think our new concept [of a wider regional agreement] that we’ve been discussing actually for a while is something that allows them to show more flexibility than they have in the past, because we have a lot bigger canvas to play with.”
That phrase—“a lot bigger canvas to play with”—is worth remembering. It will likely come into play as Trump tries to square the following circle: How to secure the release of all the remaining hostages without resuming the war in Gaza and without allowing Hamas to remain in power.
As negotiations begin over the second phase of a hostage deal—a deal Trump has repeatedly said he wants to see through—the positions of Israel and Hamas seem completely incompatible. Hamas is demanding an end to the war and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — along with the release of hundreds of more jailed terrorists — ,in exchange for the hostages while Israel insists that Hamas free all hostages and then disarm and relinquish control of the coastal territory.
Unless the diplomatic “canvas” is significantly expanded, there appears to be no way to bridge that gap.
This is where Trump’s 2017 strategy may resurface. By broadening the scope of a possible agreement, he could give Israel room to maneuver. For example, Israel has so far rejected any talk of the Palestinian Authority controlling Gaza instead of Hamas, an idea Hamas has not ruled out as long as it remains involved. But Trump may be thinking that if he dangles the possibility of normalization with Saudi Arabia into the bargain, that may temper Israel’s objection.
Just as in 2020, after announcing his Deal of the Century, he was able to convince Netanyahu to defer annexing parts of Judea and Samaria in exchange for the Abraham Accords, so too may he have something similar in mind this time.
His idea of third countries taking in Gazan refugees may be an example of the type of trade-offs that he is considering. He may have floated this idea to reduce opposition inside Netanyahu’s government to seeing the second phase of the ceasefire and hostage deal through, with the bargain being that if Israel goes through with the deal—ends the war and withdraws from Gaza—Trump will use all of America’s considerable leverage, leverage he has already shown he is not shy about using, to move tens of thousands of Gazans elsewhere.
Ultimately, Trump, the real estate mogul, approaches diplomacy as he does business, and sometimes—but not always—deals are easier to close when various other components can be thrown into the mix. That was the approach he took to the Mideast during his first term—”creating a bigger canvas to play with”— and there is little reason to think he will stray from it in his second.
The question is whether Netanyahu, now in a far weaker position than he was in 2017, has the political capital to make use of the wider canvas Trump may offer—or whether his own domestic constraints will leave him with little room to maneuver, no matter how big the deal on the table.
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