This Israeli government is not our ally.

Thomas Friedman

Dear President Trump,

There are very few initiatives you've taken since taking office that I agree with—except those related to the Middle East. Your travel there next week and your meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar—and your lack of plans to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel—suggest to me that you're beginning to recognize a fundamental truth: This Israeli government is acting in ways that threaten core American interests in the region. Netanyahu is not our friend.

Yet he thought he could make you his victim. That's why I admire how you signaled to him, through your independent negotiations with Hamas, Iran, and the Houthis, that he had no leverage over you—that you would not be his victim. This clearly panicked him. I have no doubt that the Israeli people, by and large, still consider themselves steadfast allies of the American people, and vice versa. But this ultranationalist, messianic Israeli government is no ally of America. It is the first government in Israel's history that does not prioritize peace with more of its Arab neighbors, nor the benefits that enhanced security and coexistence would bring. Its priority is annexing the West Bank, expelling the Palestinians of Gaza, and rebuilding Israeli settlements there.

The idea that Israel has a government that no longer acts as an ally of America, and should not be considered one, is a shocking and bitter pill for Israel's friends in Washington to swallow—but they must swallow it.

Because the Netanyahu government, in pursuing its extremist agenda, is undermining our interests. To your credit, you have not allowed Netanyahu to bypass you as he did other American presidents. It is also essential to defend the American security architecture built by your predecessors in the region. The current U.S.-Arab-Israeli alliance structure was established by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger after the 1973 October War, with the goal of excluding Russia and making America the dominant global power in the region, a process that has served our geopolitical and economic interests ever since. Nixon and Kissinger’s diplomacy crafted the 1974 disengagement agreements between Israel, Syria, and Egypt. These agreements laid the foundations for the Camp David Peace Accords, which paved the way for the Oslo Peace Accords. The result was a region dominated by America, its Arab allies, and Israel.

But this entire structure was largely based on a US-Israeli commitment to a two-state solution—a commitment you yourself sought to reinforce in your first term with your own plan for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank alongside Israel—on the condition that the Palestinians agree to recognize Israel and accept that their state would be demilitarized. Yet this Netanyahu government prioritized the annexation of the West Bank when it came to power in late 2022—long before Hamas’s brutal invasion on October 7, 2023—rather than the US security and peace architecture for the region.

For nearly a year, the Biden administration has been begging Netanyahu to do one thing for America and Israel: agree to open a dialogue with the Palestinian Authority on a two-state solution one day with a reformed government—in exchange for Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel. This would pave the way for Congress to pass a US-Saudi security treaty to counterbalance Iran and thwart China.

Netanyahu refused to do so, because Jewish extremists in his government said that if he did, they would bring down his government—and with Netanyahu on trial on multiple corruption charges, he could not give up the protection of being prime minister to prolong his trial and avoid a possible prison sentence.

Therefore, Netanyahu placed his personal interests above those of Israel and America. Normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the most important Islamic power—based on an effort to forge a two-state solution with moderate Palestinians—would have opened the entire Muslim world to Israeli tourists, investors, and innovators, eased tensions between Jews and Muslims worldwide, and consolidated the American advantages in the Middle East that Nixon and Kissinger had established for another decade or more.

After Netanyahu persuaded everyone for two years, reports emerged that the Americans and Saudis had decided to abandon Israel's participation in the deal—a real loss for both Israelis and the Jewish people. Reuters reported Thursday that "the United States is no longer demanding that Saudi Arabia normalize relations with Israel as a condition for progress in civilian nuclear cooperation talks."

And now things could get worse. Netanyahu is preparing to re-invade Gaza with a plan to mobilize the Palestinian population there.

In a tight corner, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on one side and the Egyptian border on the other, while it is rapidly and extensively advancing its de facto annexation of the West Bank, Israel (and especially its new chief of staff, Eyal Zamir) will incur more war crimes charges, which Bibi expects your administration to protect him from.

I have absolutely no sympathy for Hamas. I believe it is a sick organization that has done grave damage to the Palestinian cause. It bears grave responsibility for the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza today. The Hamas leadership should have released its hostages and left Gaza long ago, removing any pretext for Israel to resume fighting. But Netanyahu's plan to reconquer Gaza is not aimed at creating a moderate alternative to Hamas, led by the Palestinian Authority, but at a permanent Israeli military occupation, the unstated goal of which is to pressure all Palestinians to leave. This is a recipe for permanent rebellion—a Vietnam on the Mediterranean. At a conference on May 5 sponsored by the religious Zionist newspaper Besheva, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's far-right finance minister, spoke as if he didn't care: "We are occupying Gaza to stay. There will be no more entry and exit." The local population will be squeezed into less than a quarter of the Gaza Strip.

As Haaretz military expert Amos Harel noted: “Since the army will try to minimize casualties, analysts expect it to use extremely aggressive force, which will cause significant damage to Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure. The displacement of residents to humanitarian camps, coupled with the ongoing shortage of food and medicine, could lead to further mass civilian deaths… and more Israeli commanders and officers could face personal legal action.”

In fact, if implemented, this strategy could not only lead to more war crimes charges against Israel, but would also threaten the stability of Jordan and Egypt. These two pillars of America's Middle East alliance fear that Netanyahu will seek to displace Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank to their own countries, which would undoubtedly fuel instability that would spill over their borders even if the Palestinians did not do so.

This hurts us in other ways. As Hans Weksel, a former senior policy advisor at U.S. Central Command, told me, "The more hopeless things seem for Palestinian aspirations, the less willing there is in the region to expand U.S.-Arab-Israeli security integration, which would have provided long-term advantages over Iran and China—and without requiring comparable U.S. military resources in the region to sustain it."

Regarding the Middle East, you have some good independent instincts, Mr. President. Follow them. Otherwise, you need to prepare yourself for this urgent reality: Your Jewish grandchildren will be the first generation of Jewish children to grow up in a world in which the Jewish state is considered a pariah state. I'll leave you with the words of a Haaretz editorial from May 7: "On Tuesday, the Israeli air force killed nine children, aged 3 to 14. ... The IDF stated that the target was a 'Hamas command and control center,' and that 'steps were taken to reduce the risk of harm to uninvolved civilians.' ... We can continue to ignore the number of Palestinians in the Strip killed—more than 52,000, including some 18,000 children; to cast doubt on the credibility of the numbers; to employ all the mechanisms of repression, denial, indifference, distancing, normalization, and justification. None of this will change the bitter truth: Israel killed them. It was our hand that did it. We must not turn a blind eye. We must wake up and shout at the top of our lungs: Stop the war."

From the New York Times