President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel (not pictured) at a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 15, 2017. (Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
As a candidate and president-elect, Donald Trump was widely popular in Israel, especially on the right. For the first time, it seemed, an American president would be unreservedly sympathetic to the demands of West Bank settlers and supportive of its ambitions.
Trump’s pointed
rhetoric toward Iran and his sharp criticism of the Iranian nuclear
deal, the appointment of the right-wing lawyer David Friedman as
ambassador to Israel, and the presence by his side of his Orthodox
Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were believed to assure that he would
look the other way when it came to the ever-controversial “settler
agenda” for territorial expansion. A poll taken not long after the
election showed that 83 percent of Israelis considered Trump pro-Israel.
(In contrast, 63 percent said that Barack Obama was the worst president
for Israel in the past 30 years.)
Now, as
Israel prepares to receive Trump on his first trip abroad as president,
things look very different. Just as Trump has upended political norms
and expectations in Washington, he has confounded the expectations of
much of the Israeli public and political establishment. His brash
unpredictability has earned him the sobriquet “Mr. Balagan” — a word
that translates roughly to “hot mess” — bestowed in an op-ed by the
journalist Nadav Eyal.
Last
fall’s election results led to the expectation (or, on the left, the
fear) of free rein for Israel’s right-wing government to expand
settlements on Palestinian territory in the West Bank and annex existing
ones to Israel. In the first several months after the election, Israel
announced plans for more than 5,000 new homes on the West Bank. And
Trump was widely expected to be the first American president to live up
to his campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem, a gesture toward recognizing Israel’s claim to the whole of
Jerusalem. This, in turn, would sideline the aspirations of Palestinians
to establish a state in the West Bank, with its capital in East
Jerusalem.
President Trump listens as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
speaks at their joint news conference on Feb. 15. (Photo: Pablo Martinez
Monsivais/AP)
Naftali
Bennett, the education minister in Netanyahu’s government, expressed his
disappointment at a meeting of his far-right Habayit Hayehudi party.
“During the campaign, [Trump] often talked in praise of settling
throughout the Land of Israel and about moving the [American] embassy to
Jerusalem,” Bennett said. “From his election to now, his tune has
changed, and the impetus behind the change is not entirely clear.”
And in the weeks leading up to the visit, a
series of diplomatic disagreements and misunderstandings have ramped up
tensions. One flashpoint was a dispute about whether Trump would be
accompanied by an Israeli politician on his visit to the Western Wall, a
request by Netanyahu to which the government attached considerable
symbolic importance. But the U.S., not wishing to send a signal that
could be interpreted as endorsing Israel’s claim to the holy site,
rejected the idea. A heated argument about whether Trump would give a
speech at Masada, an ancient military fortress that is a national symbol
of the historic connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel,
resulted in changing the venue to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The Israeli government has been downplaying the tensions. Trump’s unpredictable temperament has Israeli politicians on both sides worried about an unintended slight causing a serious rift between the two countries.
Then
there was the stunning debacle of Trump’s careless blurting of
top-secret Israeli intelligence to the Russian ambassador and foreign
minister. Israel’s spy agencies were reported to be outraged and horrified over
the blunder, which they feared could endanger an Israeli agent
operating in ISIS territory. Officially, the Israeli government has
sidestepped the issue. It is telling that while most newspapers put it
on the front page, Yisrael Hayom (Israel Today) — often considered a
mouthpiece of the center-right Likud party, supported by the casino
magnate and Trump backer Sheldon Adelson — buried the story in its back
pages.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, President Trump and
Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak at a meeting in
the Oval Office on May 10. (Photo: Alexander Shcherbak/Tass via Getty
Images)
Meanwhile, the Israeli left is feeling notably less apocalyptic than it
did four months ago. One reason was the apparent shift in Trump’s
attitude toward Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. With so much
instability in the region, the plight of the Palestinians has become a
less salient issue for neighboring Arab states, reducing international
pressure on Israel to move toward a permanent peace. In addition, Abbas
is 82 years old and unpopular among Palestinians; commentators have been
discussing a succession crisis for years. But by inviting him to the
White House earlier this month, Trump bolstered Abbas and made him more
relevant, even if the American president’s promise of a deal within a
year turns out to be no more fruitful than all the peace initiatives
that preceded it.
Still, the Israeli right took
notice when national security adviser H.R. McMaster announced that Trump
would affirm his commitment to “self-determination for the
Palestinians” during his visit. It awakened fears that the Trump
administration was succumbing to what the right views as the fallacy of
treating the Palestinian leadership as a potential partner for peace —
an idea the right vehemently rejects.
Some
elements on the left, meanwhile, are treating Trump’s visit as an
occasion to mobilize Israelis around renewing the peace process. The
nonpartisan grass-roots organization Darkenu (“Our Way”) has organized a
campaign to unite the majority of Israelis who favor a “two-state
solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to pressure Netanyahu’s
government to cooperate with Trump on what the president has called “the
ultimate deal.” The campaign, which has posted more than 100 billboards
in Hebrew throughout Israel, is rooted in the conviction that Trump is a
pragmatic negotiator who won’t sell out Israeli interests.
President Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on May 3. Trump welcomed
Abbas as the U.S. president weighs how to approach a Middle East
conflict that has eluded resolution for seven decades. (Photo: Olivier
Douliery/Pool via Bloomberg
Polly Bronstein, CEO of
Darkenu, said in an email: “President Trump has reawakened the political
discourse and the hope that Israel will re-enter negotiations in order
to achieve a deal. The pragmatic approach that requires responsibility
from both sides and does not point an accusing finger at Israel may be
the approach that will succeed. We call on the prime minister and the
Knesset to say YES to a political settlement and to separate from the
Palestinians! ”
In fact, there are some on the left
who — with appropriate caution and caveats —think Trump’s ignorance and
belligerence may be an advantage because his desire to make a deal is
fueled by self-interest and egotism rather than just good intentions,
which haven’t been notably productive in the region. Journalist Orly
Azoulay wrote last week:“His predecessors had deep knowledge: Bill Clinton was able to draw every alley in Jerusalem on a napkin to indicate where Israeli sovereignty will begin and end in a future agreement. Barack Obama thoroughly understood the Israeli anxieties and the Palestinian aspirations. George W. Bush knew what he was talking about too. They all failed when they reached the main obstacle called the 1967 borders.
“Trump
is running a White House that has spiraled out of control, where there
is a mixture of madness and chaos, but he stands tall when it comes to
the ultimate deal he wants to achieve between Israel and the
Palestinians. Perhaps in the place where the experts have crashed, the
man who knows nothing about anything will manage to do something with
the tricks of a businessman who hates fussy arguments and whines about
deprivation.”
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump board Air Force One at
Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on May 19, prior to his departure on his
first overseas trip. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
Although self-reliance is central to the Israeli ethos, Israelis also
recognize the indispensable role that American support in plays
protecting the nation from hostile neighbors and international censure.
Now their fate, like it or not, is at least partly in the hands of a
political amateur who has, at least rhetorically, laid waste to decades
of American foreign policy in many parts of the world. The Israeli
public has watched this drama unfold from a distance. But now it is
coming right to their doorstep, and they can only wait, with varying
degrees of hope and apprehension, for the next eruption from the
mercurial Mr. Balagan.
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