When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Donald Trump in the White House on Tuesday, their complicated relationship will return to the spotlight. It has been anything but smooth sailing over the past eight years
Ben Samuels for Haaretz
The significance of U.S. President Donald Trump’s red carpet rollout for Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday should not be lost on anyone.
Granting the Israeli prime minister the honor of being the first foreign leader to pay in-person tribute at the White House is a gesture that both will use for their respective domestic audiences and as a message about the next four years.
However, no one should mistake this as a sign that all is well between the two leaders.
In fact, this is as much a leverage play over real-time considerations on the Gaza cease-fire’s looming second stage and more medium-term considerations about Israeli-Saudi normalization.
Both the U.S. president and Netanyahu, whether they publicly acknowledge it or not, remember the various conflict points from Trump’s first term that eventually defined the falling out between the two.
These centered on Netanyahu’s obstinance over Trump’s efforts to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, Trump’s outrage at Netanyahu’s failure to participate in the killing of Iranian Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani, Netanyahu’s prioritization of domestic political considerations, nearly prioritizing annexation over normalization, and his congratulating Joe Biden for defeating Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
These tensions actually date back to the earliest days of Trump’s first term, where they simmered under the surface as both leaders attempted to manufacture an image of a total mindmeld.
Trump began announcing his eagerness to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as early as in his 2016 presidential campaign, dubbing it ‘the mother of all deals.’
Upon assuming power, though, Trump’s dramatic policy decisions – including decisions like withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 and recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel proper in 2019 – led Israel to believe that his administration was in the bag.
However, Trump did not make these decisions motivated by affection for Netanyahu, but for domestic political considerations. He frequently joked that those actions were meant to appease GOP megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, while later also appealing to American-Jewish voters by citing those same actions.
When Trump tried to parlay these measures – along with his frozen aid to the Palestinian Authority and UN agencies focused on Palestinians – into his so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ that would supposedly lead to the Mideast conflict’s end, he was frequently met with obstinance from Netanyahu, and this is doubtless something he still remembers to this day.
Public tensions
According to Bob Woodward’s 2020 book ‘Rage,’ Trump first began to understand that Netanyahu would be a primary obstacle within the first six months of his presidency. This came when the prime minister reportedly presented him with a crudely doctored video purportedly showing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas calling for the murder of children.
Public tensions first emerged as early as September 2017 when Trump blindsided Netanyahu during a joint appearance in New York where he focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while Netanyahu attempted to discuss Iran.
‘We’re going to be discussing many things, among them peace between the Palestinians and Israel – it will be a fantastic achievement,’ Trump said. ‘We are giving it an absolute go. I think there’s a good chance that it could happen. Most people would say there’s no chance whatsoever.’
Netanyahu however, in attempting to pivot the conversation, responded: ‘I look forward to discussing with you how we can address together what you rightly call is the terrible nuclear deal with Iran and how to roll back Iran’s growing aggression in the region.’
Trump would soon acknowledge to world leaders like UN Secretary-General António Guterres that Netanyahu was the chief antagonist in his efforts.
Netanyahu’s saving grace, however, was that tensions between Trump and the Palestinian leadership was even worse. They were particularly incensed by his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and aid cuts to the Palestinians.
The U.S. administration, meanwhile, was starkly divided between those offering unconditional support for Netanyahu – exemplified by the likes of Trump’s special envoy (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner and ambassador to Israel David Friedman – and the likes of then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The latter was eventually replaced in April 2018 by another Netanyahu loyalist in Mike Pompeo, but not before he warned Kushner that he couldn’t buy his way to Mideast peace.
When Trump first began detailing his Mideast peace plan in 2019, skeptics of its viability within the administration, including Trump’s first special envoy Jason Greenblatt, resigned.
In January 2020, right before Trump unveiled the peace plan, he ordered one of the most paradigm-shifting events in the history of the modern Middle East: the assassination of Soleimani – the architect of Iran’s proxy network, led by Hezbollah and Hamas, that had been targeting Israel for decades.
Trump has since repeatedly accused Netanyahu of betraying him over Israel’s nonparticipation in that attack, notably deciding to air his grievances in the days following October 7.
‘Israel was going to do this with us, and it was being planned and we were working on it for months,’ he said during a rally in Florida. ‘We had everything all set to go, and the night before it happened, I got a call that Israel will not be participating in this attack.’
‘Nobody’s heard this story before,’ Trump added, noting: ‘They didn’t tell us why, and I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down’.
‘We were disappointed by that. Very disappointed,’ Trump continued. ‘But we did the job ourselves, with absolute precision … and then Bibi tried to take credit for it.’
Annoyance and outrage
When Trump finally unveiled his Israeli-Palestinian peace plan amid Israeli electoral gridlock following two indecisive election results in 2019, the tensions only grew.
Netanyahu was annoyed that Trump had extended an invitation to his political rival at the time, Benny Gantz. Trump, meanwhile, was outraged that Netanyahu used the unveiling of the deal as an attempt to score political points by stating that it backed Israel’s annexation of the West Bank.
When Trump’s plan went nowhere fast, he quickly pivoted to Netanyahu’s long-advocated and often-derided outside-in approach to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s regional integration, the thinking went, would force the Palestinians to follow suit.
Though Netanyahu convinced Gantz in April 2020 to form a unity government to end Israel’s political gridlock, one key condition was a fixed deadline to begin the annexation process despite Trump’s opposition – and his growing irritation with annexation advocates like Friedman and Pompeo.
Netanyahu’s desire to pursue annexation led to increased tensions between him and Kushner’s team. He only dropped the matter when Kushner managed to parlay normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates as an alternative – a plan Netanyahu nearly derailed after proposing early elections, much to Trump’s consternation.
This kick-started the Abraham Accords – Trump’s signature foreign policy achievement – which has since earned widespread bipartisan support despite concerns that its attempts to bypass the Palestinians would doom it to failure.
Less than three months after Trump’s rapid efforts to expand on Israel’s normalization in the Middle East, he lost the election to Biden. While Netanyahu was one of many world leaders to congratulate Biden, Trump maintained a fierce grudge against the prime minister that was publicly buried for several years.
‘The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with,’ Trump told Axios’ Barak Ravid. ‘Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.’
He continued: ‘I liked Bibi. But I also like loyalty. The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape. He was very early – like, earlier than most. I haven’t spoken to him since. F*ck him.’
Trump also insisted that his decision to recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights saved Netanyahu during the April 2019 election.
The peace between the two was seemingly restored when Netanyahu visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago last July, shortly after a tense meeting with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Following Trump’s November victory, Netanyahu has practically fallen over himself with praise for the president on a daily basis – even as he has publicly attempted to downplay the Gaza cease-fire that Trump insisted upon before even taking office.
But despite Netanyahu’s fawning efforts, Trump declined to say whether he trusted him during an interview with Time Magazine. He also reshared a video of economist Jeffrey Sachs calling the prime minister a ‘dark son of a bitch,’ and publicly enlisted his special Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff to assert public pressure on Netanyahu to abide by the cease-fire and not offer any distractions from his ambitious agenda.
Should talks to enter the deal’s second stage fail and the Gaza war resume because of Netanyahu’s actions, it stands to reason that Trump’s previous outrage toward him will pale in comparison to what might come next.