Growing international frustration with Washington over the war in Gaza spilled into the open at the UN General Assembly this week, as US allies recognized a Palestinian state in a major test for US President Donald Trump’s Middle East policy.
After promising at the start of his second term to quickly end the war between Israel and Hamas, Trump looks increasingly like a bystander, as Israeli forces escalate their onslaught on the Palestinian enclave and Trump remains reluctant to rein in the US’ closest regional ally.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blindsided Trump with a strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar earlier this month that all but doomed the Trump administration’s latest effort to secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal.
Israel has since launched a ground assault into Gaza City that the US accepted without objection, amid global condemnation of a deepening humanitarian crisis in the coastal strip.
Moreover, defying Trump’s warnings against what he called a gift to Hamas, a group of US allies, including Britain, France, Canada and Australia, announced just before and during the UN gathering their recognition of the state of Palestine, in a dramatic diplomatic shift.
“Trump has not been able to achieve any major progress or gains in the region, particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian top front,” said Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.
“In fact, things are worse than when he entered office,” Katulis said.
With an end to the nearly two-year-old conflict seeming more remote than ever, the apparent sidelining of Trump has added to skepticism over his repeated claims since his return to office in January that he is a masterful peacemaker who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said that if Trump really wants to win the coveted award, he needs to stop the war in Gaza.
“There is one person who can do something about it, and that is the US president. And the reason he can do more than us, is because we do not supply weapons that allow the war in Gaza to be waged,” Macron told French broadcaster BFM TV from New York.
Some analysts see Trump’s unwillingness to apply Washington’s leverage with Netanyahu as a realization that the conflict — like Russia’s war in Ukraine — is much more complex and intractable than he has acknowledged.
Others see it as tacit acceptance that Netanyahu would act in what he considers his own and Israel’s interests, and that there is little the US president can do to change that.
Still others speculate that Trump might have been distracted from the Middle East by domestic issues such as the recent murder of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk, continuing fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities for what he says are law enforcement missions.
Despite appearing less engaged on Gaza recently, Trump on Tuesday met on the UN sidelines with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Trump was expected to lay out US proposals for post-war governance in Gaza, without Hamas involvement, and push for Arab and Muslim countries to agree to contribute military forces to help provide security, Axios reported.
Although Trump has at times expressed impatience with Netanyahu’s handling of the war, he made clear in his UN speech on Tuesday that he is not ready to back away from strong support for Israel, or be swayed by other countries’ endorsement of Palestinian statehood.
Such announcements only serve to “encourage continued conflict” by giving Hamas a “reward for these horrible atrocities,” Trump said.
France, Britain, Canada, Australia and others have insisted that recognizing a Palestinian state would help to preserve the prospects of a “two-state solution” to the long-running conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and help to end the Gaza war.
While leaders taking the podium at the UN gathering did not directly chastise Trump for his stance, some analysts saw a clear message to the US president.
“It all depends on Trump, who could end this war with one choice word to Israel’s prime minister,” said Laura Blumenfeld, a Middle East expert at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington.
That word, Blumenfield said, is “enough.”
The US is Israel’s chief arms supplier and historically acts as its diplomatic shield at the UN and other international organizations. Last week, the US vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution that would have demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
However, Trump has given no sign he might use those pressure points.
Even after Israel bombed a Hamas office in the territory of US ally Qatar, he held a tense phone call with Netanyahu, but took no action.
No matter how many countries recognize Palestinian independence, full UN membership would require approval by the Security Council, where the US has a veto.
Still, some analysts declined to rule out the possibility that Netanyahu, due to visit the White House on Monday next week for the fourth time since Trump returned to office, might yet exhaust Trump’s patience.
Israel’s strike in Doha dampened Trump’s hopes for more Gulf states joining the Abraham Accords, a landmark agreement brokered by his first administration in which several Arab countries forged diplomatic ties with Israel.
Israel is now weighing annexing parts of the occupied West Bank, which might be fueled by anger against the international push for recognition of Palestinian statehood.
The most right-wing government in Israel’s history has declared there would be no Palestinian state as it pushes on with its fight against Hamas following its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 people according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s military response has killed more than 65,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials.
The UAE has threatened to suspend its membership in the Abraham Accords — which Trump has long touted as one of his crowning foreign policy successes — if Israel goes ahead with West Bank annexation.
Most Middle East experts say such a move would also close the door on the prospects for Gulf power Saudi Arabia ever joining, and that Netanyahu is not likely to go ahead without the green light from Trump, who has been noncommittal so far.
“Trump is going to publicly let Netanyahu do what he thinks is right, especially in Gaza,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy US national intelligence officer on the Middle East. “But privately, the president and his team could apply some pressure.”
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