Trumps pro-Israel policies are Israels biggest liability

Washington’s political class tends to measure its commitment to Israel by the volume of its applause — how loudly it cheers Jerusalem, how quickly it moves an embassy, how swiftly it tears up an arms agreement with Tehran.

By that metric, Donald Trump is the most “pro-Israel” president in American history. But metrics built on applause rarely survive contact with strategic reality.

The uncomfortable truth that few in either Jerusalem or Washington’s pro-Israel lobby want to confront is this: Trump’s maximalist approach to the Middle East, for all its rhetorical warmth toward the Jewish state, may be generating liabilities for Israel that will outlast any single administration.

Consider the regional landscape. Trump’s transactional foreign policy has, in certain respects, produced genuine Israeli wins. The Abraham Accords were a real diplomatic achievement, normalizing relations with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan — something Israeli diplomats had quietly sought for decades.

The assassination of Qasem Soleimani degraded Iranian operational capacity, at least temporarily. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, whatever one thinks of its symbolism, reflected a reality on the ground that previous administrations had dishonestly papered over.

But a realist perspective must look beyond the ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Trump’s instinct to frame every relationship as a bilateral transaction, and to treat multilateral frameworks as obstacles rather than tools, has left the US with diminished credibility as a regional broker.

When Washington tears up agreements unilaterally — whether the Iran nuclear deal or assorted security understandings with Kurdish allies — it signals to the entire region that American commitments are contingent on electoral outcomes. That is not a foundation on which Israel can build durable security arrangements.

More troubling is the Gaza dimension. Trump’s second-term approach to the conflict — providing near-unconditional backing for Israeli military operations while floating maximalist ideas about forcibly displacing Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan — has isolated Israel diplomatically in ways that compound over time.

Arab governments that quietly cooperated with Israel on security matters have been politically boxed in by their own publics. The prospect of Saudi normalization, which was tantalizingly close before October 7, has been set back by years.

And the reputational damage Israel has sustained in the Global South — with consequent effects on trade, multilateral institutions and even the diaspora — is not something that American cheerleading can reverse.

There is also the question of strategic dependency. Every time Washington gives Jerusalem a blank check — militarily, diplomatically, in the UN Security Council — it subtly erodes Israel’s incentive to make the hard strategic choices that small states in difficult neighborhoods ultimately must make for themselves.

A truly pro-Israel policy would insist on Israeli agency and long-term thinking, not provide cover for decisions whose consequences fall entirely on Israelis.

Trump, to his credit, has occasionally shown flashes of the realist instinct — his willingness to negotiate with adversaries, his skepticism of open-ended military commitments, his demand that allies carry more of their own weight.

But these impulses are overwhelmed by his need to perform loyalty to his political base, and by advisers whose ideological commitments to Greater Israel supersede any sober calculation of American or Israeli interests.

The result is a policy that looks maximally pro-Israel on the surface while quietly accumulating strategic debt. Israel is a resilient, capable state. It does not need Washington to be its unconditional patron. It needs Washington to be a thoughtful ally — one willing to occasionally say, “this path leads somewhere neither of us wants to go.”

That conversation requires honesty. And honesty, unfortunately, has never been Washington’s strong suit when it comes to the Middle East.

Thisarticle was originally published on Leon Hadar’s Global Zeitgeist and is republished with kind permission. Become a subscriberhere.