A much-touted meeting between US President Donald J. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, their third encounter this year, apparently failed to move the needle on a Gaza ceasefire, despite both men expressing optimism that an agreement was only days away.

Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu went to dinner with differing expectations. Mr. Trump wanted a ceasefire and would likely have wanted to announce it with Mr. Netanyahu by his side, while Mr. Netanyahu preferred to bask in the limelight, hoping it would boost his struggling popularity at home.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu probably just want(ed) to take a victory lap and not have to agree on anything that risks his own political standing,” said Rachel Brandenburg, the Washington managing director at the Israel Policy Forum. Ultimately, Mr. Trump gave the prime minister what he wanted in the expectation that it would help Mr. Netanyahu domestically. 

Support without strategy

Earlier, Mr. Trump sought to support Mr. Netanyahu by demanding that Israel’s judiciary drop its corruption charges against the prime minister. Mr. Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust — all of which he denies. The trial began in 2020 and involves three criminal cases.

Mr. Trump apparently hopes, against all odds, that his catering to Mr. Netanyahu’s whims will persuade the prime minister that a ceasefire that frees some of Hamas’s 50 remaining hostages, kidnapped during the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, will give him a decisive popularity boost.

In a similar vein, there was no indication as the two men met that Israeli and Hamas negotiators in Doha had narrowed their differences on the terms of a ceasefire in indirect talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt. Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, expects to join the Doha talks in the coming days.

As he departed for Washington, Mr. Netanyahu described as “unacceptable” Hamas’s demands for US, Qatari and Egyptian guarantees that the 60-day ceasefire would lead to a permanent end of the war, an Israeli troop pullback to positions they held when Israel unilaterally broke an earlier pause in the fighting in March, and the reinvolvement of the United Nations and international organisations in the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

“Now, when Hamas seems ready to make a deal, Netanyahu is using (Hamas’s demands) to slow down and perhaps eventually blow up the negotiations,” said military affairs journalist Amir Tibon.

A controversial vision for Gaza

A Hamas official asserted that the negotiators had achieved “zero” progress in Doha, countering a statement by Mr. Netanyahu’s office that the negotiations were making progress. “Israel insists on its mechanism for the humanitarian aid distribution, ‘the death traps.’ This is not acceptable to the (Hamas) movement by any means,” the Hamas official said.

Earlier this year, the US and Israel created the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to replace the UN and international organisations and control the flow of aid. Hundreds of aid seekers have been killed at the Foundation’s four militarised distribution points in Gaza that a private US security company secures.

A $2 billion leaked Foundation plan to build large-scale camps called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” in Gaza and possibly elsewhere, to house the Palestinians as a way of “replacing Hamas’ control over the population” likely reinforced Hamas’ insistence that the UN and international organisations regain control of the flow of aid into the Strip.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz appeared to put flesh on the Foundation’s skeleton by suggesting that Israel would use a ceasefire to relocate 600,000 Palestinians to a “humanitarian city.”

The city, dubbed an internment camp by critics, would be established on the ruins of the southern Gazan city of Rafah. Its residents would be allowed in after an Israeli security screening and would be barred from leaving, Mr. Katz said.

Mr. Katz said the forced relocation would be part of “the emigration plan, which will happen.” The leaked plan also likely hardened Hamas’ suspicion, supported by a broad swath of Palestinians, that the Foundation is a building block in Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu’s desire to depopulate Gaza and turn it into a high-end luxury real estate development.

The two leaders reiterated their desire during their White House dinner on Monday. Mr. Trump first articulated his plan, which has since been embraced by Mr. Netanyahu, during an Oval Office meeting with the prime minister in February.

With no evidence to back it up, Mr. Trump asserted on Monday that “we’ve had great cooperation … from surrounding countries, great cooperation from every single one of them. The international community, including all Middle Eastern states, has condemned the Trump-Netanyahu resettlement plan.

The Foundation’s labelling of the camps as ‘transit areas’ and reference to sites outside of the Strip reinforced the suspicions. “This is a recipe for catastrophe because it ensures that no agreement in Gaza is durable … If this plan is going to become policy, that renders any post-war framework moot,” including the entry into Gaza of a post-war Arab peacekeeping force, said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat.

The leaking of the Foundation plan and Mr. Katz’s disclosure seemed timed to complicate the Doha ceasefire talks. Mr. Netanyahu is probably counting on Mr. Trump laying the blame at Hamas’s doorstep should the talks fail for the umpteenth time.

Israel’s new military doctrine

Even so, Mr. Netanyahu has to tread carefully. Changes in Israel’s defense doctrine likely make Israel, at least in the short term, more dependent on US weapon supplies and political support. Israel replaced the deterrence principle in its defense doctrine with the notion of militarily emasculating its foes since Hamas’s October 7 attack.

The new Israeli doctrine has shaped Israel’s war goals in Gaza, as well as its decimation of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia and political movement, and the Syrian military in the wake of last December’s fall of President Bashar al-Assad. Beyond Iran’s nuclear facilities and nuclear science community, Israel targeted the Islamic Republic’s military command during its 12-day war against Iran.

In dealing with Mr. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu has to also keep in mind Israel’s shift from an emphasis on its ability to defend itself to greater battlefield cooperation with the United States and, tacitly, regional players, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The two Arab states, alongside the United States, helped Israel intercept Iranian missiles when Iran twice last year fired missile barrages at the Jewish state and during last month’s Israel-Iran war. Similarly, the United States joined Israel in June in striking at Iranian nuclear facilities.

Complicating Mr. Netanyahu’s calculations is the fact that greater US involvement in Israeli military operations does not sit well with many America First proponents in the administration and the president’s support base. The America First crowd opposes US military interventions and overseas engagement and could hold the president to his campaign promise not to get the United States into more wars.

Redefining the US–Israel alliance

Finally, Mr. Netanyahu has to take into account the debates in Trump administration circles about the restructuring of US-Israeli military relations. The influential conservative, Washington-based Heritage Foundation tabled earlier this year a plan to wean Israel off its military dependency on the United States that would transform the Jewish state from an aid recipient into a full-fledged US partner.

The plan suggests that the Trump administration use the renegotiation of the Obama administration’s 2016 $38 billion ten-year US–Israeli memorandum of understanding to restructure the US-Israel military relationship.

To achieve this, the plan calls for increasing the memorandum’s annual $3.8 billion US assistance to Israel to $4 billion, while reducing it by $250 million each year starting from 2029 until 2047, when the aid would cease. Furthermore, Israel would be required to increase its purchases of US defence equipment by $250 million per year. The Heritage plan should not come as a surprise.

Mr. Trump discarded traditional conventions of the US-Israeli relationship from the day he returned to the Oval Office in January by engaging directly with Hamas, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and Iran without consulting Israel first, informing it in advance, or taking Israeli interests and/or views into account.

“Donald Trump is the first US president who, in six months, has both sidelined and embraced Israel when it suited his interests, seemingly impervious to political blowback,” said former US Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller.

[The Turbulent World first published this piece]

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.