With the announcement that both Hamas and Israel have signed on to the first phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, a rare opportunity has emerged to end two years of terrible violence. Under the U.S.-brokered agreement, Hamas has promised to return all the remaining hostages it seized in 2023 in exchange for Israel’s release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and pledge of a partial withdrawal of its forces from the territory. In addition to life-saving relief to Palestinians in Gaza and the families of hostages, many hope the deal could bring renewed stability to the region.
If history is any indication, however, expectations of a durable peace or even sustainable relief for Palestinians may well be disappointed. Trump returned to the White House in January intent on replacing his predecessor’s failing Middle East policy, and he did so in ways that departed from the policies of his own first administration. His second term got off to an impressive start, helping secure—even before his term actually started—a Gaza cease-fire. In his first few months in office, more bold moves followed, including opening a precedent-breaking direct channel from the United States to Hamas, restarting nuclear negotiations with Iran, reaching a truce with the Houthis in Yemen, and waiving U.S. sanctions on Syria.
Officials in Washington also expressed hope that they could extend the Abraham Accords, the agreements normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab states, to Saudi Arabia and even Syria. Doing so would advance the long-term goal of managing the region’s tensions through a U.S.-directed set of relationships that would allow the United States to shift its military resources to other parts of the world. Yet the administration found its policies continually upended by Israeli actions.
In March, Israel broke the Washington-mediated Gaza cease-fire, then drew the Trump administration into so-called humanitarian operations that bypassed the long-established UN framework. By late spring, deepening famine had driven more of the Palestinian population in Gaza toward the Egyptian border, creating tension in Israel’s long-standing peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. Then in June, Israel undermined U.S. negotiations with Tehran not only by bombing Iran but also by persuading the Trump administration to join it by targeting Iran’s main nuclear facilities with bunker-busting bombs.
In Syria, Israel increased military pressure on the new government of President Ahmed al-Shara even as Washington was throwing it a vital economic and diplomatic lifeline. And in September, Israel attacked Qatar, a vital U.S. ally that hosts the U.S. Central Command’s main forward headquarters, Al Udeid Air Base, and has been a key mediator in negotiations between Israel and Hamas and in a host of other conflicts. This reckless action, which blindsided the U.S. administration, was one of the main catalysts for Trump’s forceful push to end the war in Gaza.
Now, with the U.S.-led pact between Israel and Hamas, it may appear that this pattern has been broken. By making strong demands on Israel as well as Hamas, Trump was able to get both sides quickly to the table and to agree on the initial phase of a plan. Despite the Israeli government’s apparent preference for continuing the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had little choice but to sign on after Trump made clear that he had had enough and had therefore initiated a “strong” conversation with the Israeli leader. But even this agreement could soon succumb to Israel’s divergent aims. To appease his right flank and ensure his own political survival, Netanyahu might be tempted to resume the war on Hamas once the hostages are freed and obstruct meaningful humanitarian aid once again. He could attack Iran again to divert attention from what he would consider finishing the job in Gaza.
The Israeli government’s preference for using military force to keep adversaries off balance could undermine U.S objectives, as witnessed with previous Trump administration efforts in the region. This stark trajectory, with Israel as chaos agent and the United States reluctantly following, carries enormous risks. Should Netanyahu decide to break the October 9 agreement with Hamas once its initial objectives are carried out, or negotiations over the second phase of the deal break down, Israel could drag the United States back into a war that Washington doesn’t want.
It need not be like this. As it showed in its initial months in office and over the last few weeks, the Trump administration is capable of charting its own course—and even, on occasion, using the considerable leverage that the White House commands. The current accord shows that this kind of pressure can bring at least initial positive results. But for these efforts to succeed in the longer term, the United States will need to recognize the extent to which its long-term interests diverge from Israel’s and how often U.S. policy in the Middle East has been undermined by its closest ally in the region. To truly break this dynamic, the United States will need to apply continuous pressure on Israel to adhere to a course that promotes regional stability rather than undermines it. Otherwise, this latest deal could turn into yet another failed U.S.-led peace initiative.
OUT OF ALIGNMENT
The notion that Israel and the United States have different goals within a shared strategic paradigm is neither novel nor controversial, but over the past two years, it has been exposed as never before. For decades, U.S. strategy on the Middle East has rested on the twin pillars of supporting Israel and preserving the free flow of oil. Alongside these aims, successive administrations have defined a series of correlated objectives: preventing enemies from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, maintaining a sufficient American military presence to stave off other threats to U.S. interests, and sustaining effective counterterrorism. Overall, however, since the wars of the early years of the post-9/11 era, Washington has favored a relatively stable Middle East in which U.S. allies accommodate one another even if they do not maintain official relations.
Israel’s strategic interests, in turn, have revolved around its own national security and its close alliance with the United States. Successive U.S. administrations viewed Israel’s wars as defensive and supplied it with advanced weapons and military support while embracing the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Many in Washington assumed that peace agreements, from the Camp David accords of 1978 to the Oslo process in the 1990s, were guiding Israel into general alignment with the United States. But throughout these years, Washington failed to seriously challenge Israel’s continual expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied territory, which gradually precluded the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. The “peace process” masked a growing divergence between Israeli and American administrations.
Trump administration policies have been continually upended by Israeli actions.
In fact, as a right-wing vanguard steadily gained power in Israel, the country’s definition of its interests began to look far different from what was outlined in official U.S. rhetoric. The center-left parties supporting a two-state solution all but disappeared, and national security gradually became equated with annexation of at least the West Bank—a move that would preclude a sovereign Palestinian state. When Netanyahu formed a government with far-right parties in 2022, the settlement drive was supercharged, and ministerial oversight of the occupation is now spearheaded by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, extremist leaders for whom any notion of Palestinian rule or even a long-term Palestinian presence in any part of the former British mandate territory of Palestine is anathema.
Nonetheless, as recently as September 2023, the Biden administration thought it was on the same page as Israel, believing that an Israeli-Saudi agreement could usher in an era of long-sought stability in the absence of a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After October 7, however, the Netanyahu government saw a golden opportunity to bury the cause of Palestinian statehood. Since 2024, it has also sought to continually expand Israel’s military footprint in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and even Qatar. Although this adventurism has often flown in the face of stated U.S. policy goals, Israel faced no real resistance from the Biden or Trump administrations until now.
FLOUTED AUTHORITY
The events after October 7 exposed a policy divergence between Israel and the United States that had been years in the making. After Hamas’s attack and Israel’s blistering response, the Biden administration wanted a quick end to the war so Saudi Arabia and Israel could move ahead in normalizing relations; it even proposed that such a step could attract regional buy-in. Despite Israel’s escalation of the war in Gaza, President Joe Biden’s administration continued to press for a Saudi-Israeli agreement before the end of his term in January 2025. But in terms of opinion in the Middle East and around the world, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman more accurately read the room. As Israeli war crimes mounted, he understood that it was not the time to “make peace” with Israel.
But nor did the idea of a settlement find a buyer in Netanyahu, who needed the war to continue so he could appease his far-right coalition partners and delay any judicial reckoning over the corruption charges he faced. Indeed, the Abraham Accords themselves seemed to be of diminishing value to Netanyahu, as Israel has flexed its military muscle across the region in the administration’s final year and it was saved over and over by the United States and friendly Arab countries (who helped shield it from Iranian missile attacks). In the meantime, apart from imposing sanctions on a few particularly violent settlers, the Biden administration failed to impose serious costs on the Israeli government for allowing and even encouraging a widening campaign of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. In this political vacuum, Israel appropriated more West Bank land in 2024 than in the previous 20 years combined.
Despite its bold opening moves, for much of its first eight months in office the second Trump administration proved equally ineffective at furthering U.S. goals of long-term peace and stability. Although Trump achieved a cease-fire in Gaza on day one, he stood back when Israel broke it six weeks later and then handed the Israeli far right a gift by floating the idea of turning the territory into the “Riviera on the Mediterranean”—supposedly after the Palestinian population left. And when Israel stepped up its campaign in Gaza and imposed a total ban on aid to the territory, the United States did not apply pressure to prevent a famine from spreading there. Instead, U.S. business interests and the Israeli military worked together to form the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and shut down hundreds of aid distribution points across the Gaza Strip. By August, nearly 900 people seeking food had been killed in the vicinity of GHF sites, according to the UN.
Israel’s biggest achievement was showing the world that the United States would acquiesce not only to its ongoing assault on Gaza but also to its expanding regional war—no matter how much these actions diverged from long-term U.S. interests. Take the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the spring, while engaged in talks over the fate of Iran’s nuclear program, Trump indicated that he wanted a deal. Moreover, a significant proportion of the U.S. president’s political base, including the influential right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson, was averse to a new war with Tehran.
Nonetheless, by launching an Israeli military campaign against Iran, Netanyahu convinced Trump to engage U.S. forces in offensive operations. In June, the United States sent rock-penetrating bombs deep into air shafts of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz. Although the full extent of the damage remains a matter of dispute, the attacks showed the extent to which Israel could goad the United States into taking on major military operations that served especially Israel’s interests.
U.S. and Israeli objectives in Lebanon and Syria are increasingly in conflict as well. The Trump administration says it wants to stabilize Lebanon and bring the country more closely under its stewardship, now that Hezbollah, the main Islamist group that Iran backs there, has been significantly weakened. Notably, the United States supported the election of a new Lebanese president and prime minister in January, bolstered the Lebanese army’s ability to replace Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and participated in a U.S.-chaired committee established in November 2024 to monitor a negotiated cease-fire with Israel there.
By contrast, the Israeli government has continued military operations in Lebanon that have hindered the country’s attempts at restabilization. Israeli forces continue to occupy several points in the south in violation of the U.S.-mediated agreement; Israeli fighter jets regularly carry out strikes on suspected Hezbollah targets throughout the country, killing civilians in the process; and Israel has largely ignored the monitoring committee, of which it is a part.
Israel seeks to keep Syria internally divided and weak.
On the plus side, Israel’s war in Lebanon and attacks on Iran in the autumn of 2024 helped precipitate the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, an unambiguous win for the United States and the entire region, especially the Syrian people. At first, the Syrian regime’s overthrow by an Islamist rebel group with roots in the terrorist groups ISIS (the Islamic State) and al-Qaeda alarmed the Biden administration. But Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, won Trump’s admiration. In May, after an unexpected meeting with him, Trump announced that the United States would lift the sanctions that had long punished Syria, giving it a real chance for an economic revival. For the United States, building a secure and stable new Syria is a priority aimed at avoiding the collapse of the state, the reemergence of groups such as ISIS, and wider regional instability that could be exploited by Iran and other adversaries.
Yet even after pledging strong support for the fledgling government in Damascus, the Trump administration has not impeded Israel’s continual military interventions in Syria. Since the collapse of the Assad regime, Israel has destroyed most of the country’s military capabilities through hundreds of airstrikes. It has also seized Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights that it has occupied since 1967 and demanded the “demilitarization” of southern Syria, purportedly to protect Syria’s Druze minority. Such moves have undermined the country’s fragile recovery and increased friction with Turkey, a U.S. ally and NATO member, and that may very well be the aim. The Trump administration worked hard to bring the Syrian government and Druze factions together to negotiate a cease-fire after the latest flare-up in the south, but it has done little to reverse Israel’s military gains: those advances have kept Syria internally divided and weak, an objective that Israel has communicated to Washington.
Then there is the question of Gaza itself. The Hamas-Israeli deal offers a long-overdue reprieve from violence and, hopefully, hunger. The families of the hostages will finally be able to see their loved ones or bury their dead. With the resumption of large-scale aid deliveries, Gaza’s population may be able to return from the brink of starvation. But the details on Israel’s side of the bargain are vague enough to allow Netanyahu to sabotage the next steps. Israel could, for example, continue to obstruct aid and medical personal and humanitarian workers, carry out intermittent deadly attacks through the Israel Defense Forces or the gangs it supports, and fail to withdraw, continuing a quasi-military occupation of Gaza. Much remains unclear about an international “stabilization force” that the plan calls for. Most challenging is the unaddressed issue of a Palestinian state, which the Netanyahu government has openly rejected. It is uncertain whether Palestinians will consider the plan’s envisioned apolitical technocratic body as a legitimate form of Palestinian governance for Gaza, since they were not a party to the negotiations.
LEVERAGE, IF YOU USE IT
As with his predecessors, Trump came into office saying he wanted to lessen the U.S. footprint in the Middle East. Yet again and again, the United States has been drawn back in, militarily as well as diplomatically, because of Israel’s expanding offensive operations across the region. Perhaps this time will be different, but so far, Trump has been inclined to support Netanyahu’s tactical successes even when those work against longer-term U.S. strategic interests—or even when they upend ongoing U.S. policy efforts. Israel’s increasing reliance on the force of arms—spurning negotiated solutions to conflicts in favor of keeping all enemies and potential enemies off balance through military force—carries enormous risks for Washington. Israel has already succeeded once in drawing the United States into the fight and could well try to do so again—whether in Iran, Yemen, or even Gaza, where any move to drive the Palestinian population into the Sinai would ignite a conflict with Egypt.
Although such concerns may seem hypothetical, the Israeli strike on Qatar last month has demonstrated just how confident Israel has become. In targeting Hamas’s negotiators in Doha, the Qatari capital, Israel aimed to blow up even the illusion of seeking a diplomatic end to the war in Gaza. Despite the attack’s failure, Israel succeeded, once again, in showing that it could set the terms. This has left Gulf countries wondering if they, too, could be dragged into reckless wars if they form the partnerships with Israel that the United States seeks.
Israel’s increasing reliance on the force of arms carries enormous risks for Washington.
After two years of extraordinary bloodshed, much of the world sees Israel as a rogue state that is smashing long-held norms with impunity, with U.S. complicity. A number of high-level American military commanders have told us that until Washington compels Israel to seriously engage with creating some kind of viable Palestinian future, the Israeli approach of pursuing military hegemony will mean indefinite wars and more regional instability. If the U.S.-led world order is a geopolitical game of Jenga, it could well be Israel that ends up pulling the final piece.
Given the contentious domestic dynamics around U.S.-Israeli relations, it will take political courage for any U.S. administration to pressure Israel to curb its expanding militarism and pursue lasting peace, first by repairing its partnerships with Arab states. Not too long ago, though, one would say it took audacity for Israel to move against the interests of its superpower patron—not the other way around. President Dwight Eisenhower and President Gerald Ford threatened to reevaluate the relationship because of Israeli intransigence. President Ronald Reagan and President George H. W. Bush delayed arms shipments and loan guarantees to express their displeasure with certain Israeli military operations and settlement expansion. Using leverage to enforce U.S. interests is hardly a new approach. Nor should it be controversial. At a time of extraordinary challenges to U.S. power around the world, it would be far stranger for the United States to cede its larger security agenda to the whims of a heavily armed client.
Trump has made the first step in reversing course on this trend and has considerable, perhaps unique, political protection to undertake such steps. But it will take consistent pressure and courage to get to the “strong, durable and everlasting peace” that the president says he wants. For the hostage families and tens of thousands who lost their lives, family members, and homes forever, it is tragic that the United States has refrained from using its power to end the war for so long. With myriad global security threats around the world, the United States cannot afford to fail yet again.
