Alastair Crooke – Strategic Culture Dec 22, 2025

Leading Israeli commentator, Anna Barsky, in Ma’ariv (in Hebrew) writes: “Let [Trump’s] plan in Gaza – fail”.

“An Israeli ‘waiting ploy’ is being formulated: not to hurl out a frontal rejection … [but rather] to bet that reality in the region will take its course”.

“[Yet], the fault line [over] Trump’s Gaza Plan is real … Israel demands a clear order: First, the disarmament of Hamas, i.e., first its actual removal from power, and only after that – reconstruction, international power and Israeli withdrawal”.

And here’s the ‘rub’: “The Prime Minister’s Office understands that Trump, apparently, does not intend to accept the Israeli ‘precondition’ formula”. “And here is the heart of the problem … which is that Hamas does not intend to disarm or leave the territory”.

Thus …“The Gulf states, Egypt, and also significant parts of the American establishment, propose a different order: First, reconstruction and an international mechanism are created, then a stabilisation force and a technocratic government are introduced, and then ‘in the process’, the issue of Hamas – is [only] gradually addressed”.

Thus, the Israeli leadership is both disillusioned and frustrated.

But this is just the tip of the spear. It goes deeper – as Alon Mizrahi points out:

“Israeli leaders are noting that Arab states have not agreed to normalise with Israel. The Jewish nationalists may have their man in the White House, but all he seems to care about is making Arab money. No [West Bank] annexation; no Iran [regime change] and now an ‘insulting’ demand for a ‘Phase 2’ in Gaza, where Israel is supposed to not only tolerate a foreign military presence, but also allow reconstruction to take place”.

The problem is the increasingly strategic divergence of interests between Netanyahu and Trump: They diverge not only on Trump’s Gaza plan, but on Syria (where U.S. Envoy Tom Barrack is seen to side with Turkey’s stance) and on Lebanon where Washington is seen to side with Beirut.

“Trump needs an achievement. He needs to sign something”. Whereas Israel’s goals are to maintain the freedom of military action that it currently enjoys in Syria and Lebanon, but which disturbs and disrupts U.S. efforts to orchestrate headline-catching agreements between Israel and regional powers.

Trump wants a Nobel prize and judging by his recent statements, feels that Netanyahu is not ‘providing the goods’ — a feeling of disillusion that is reciprocated in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.

Ben Caspit relates that Trump’s inconsistent decision-making remains a major source of frustration for Netanyahu:

“The President can be on your side today, an associate suggests … but tomorrow he can easily flip without batting an eyelid, With Trump, every day is a new fight, depending on whom he spoke to the night before or what economic interests are at play. It’s a difficult and, above all, an endless struggle …”.

“Working with the Qataris and Saudis”, in the Israeli perspective, one commentator suggests, “represents for Trump the mesmerizing promise of mammoth investments, which bolster his image as effective and successful; but also, even more importantly, have opened a personal gateway to making billions in real estate deals across the Middle East”.

This Trump shift to his transactional business-first approach is in fact enshrined in the recent U.S. National Strategic Statement (NSS), which takes the U.S. focus away from Israeli security concerns to “partnership, friendship, and investment”. Bin Salman’s November visit to Washington vividly demonstrated this shift, shaped as it was by high-level meetings, an investment forum and a long list of agreements on expanding cooperation in these areas.

World Liberty Financial launched in 2024 by Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric, alongside associates like Zach and Alex Witkoff (sons of Trump’s Envoy, Steve Witkoff), underscore the Trump family’s Gulf business priorities – projects that are adding billions of dollars to the family wealth.

Furthermore, Trump’s excessive partiality for Israel – such as acknowledging to Mark Levine at the White House Hanuka party that indeed, he is the first Jewish President of the U.S.: “True. That’s true”, Trump said gratuitously rubbing salt into the ‘America Firster’ open sores. This obsequiousness has translated into strategic damage for Zionism – even among American Conservatives in Congress: “They hate Israel”,Trump said at the same gathering.

“By now”, Alon Mizrahi argues, “Israel and its legions of supporters in the American political system have to be asking themselves whether they have made a critical mistake by betting ‘all’ on Trump”. They stood behind Trump for strategic purpose, and not merely for his commitment to defending Israel’s image and in making ‘anti-semitism’ laws bite.

Mizrahi explains:

“Nice and potentially important, PR-related objectives are not what [the Israeli eschatological Right] is really about: The expansion of real-world power and control over people and territory is its defining, guiding vision and aspiration. Trump was chosen to help with that: for Israel to formally own parts of Syria; to terminate Hezbollah in Lebanon; to annex and ethnically cleanse the West Bank … to break Iran, and to curtail the rise of any rival power in the Middle East, including one as accommodating of Zionism as the Arab Gulf states”,

“They know they have limited time before the general distaste for Zionism in the world, including the U.S., gives way to new leaders, norms, and standards. So, they need to act with urgency. And this is what they’re doing: not damage control, but preparation for impact. They are not playing defence; they are playing offense”.

Ben Caspit writes that, whereas the second phase of Trump’s Gaza plan likely will be the most pressing issue at the Netanyahu-Trump year-end summit, it is Iran that poses the greater strategic threat to Israel. And it is in this context that Israeli strategic commentator Shemuel Meir raises another Israeli-perceived Trump lapse:

Were Iran’s uranium enrichment sites truly ‘obliterated’ on 13 June? And what happened to the 440 kg of 60% enriched uranium that Iran still has?

In the current state of wide scepticism as to the results of Trump’s attack on Iran, “an extraordinary nuclear story emerged in Israeli discourse this week, with more to it, than meets the eye: Netanyahu unexpectedly announced the appointment of his military secretary, Major General Roman Goffman, as the next head of the Mossad”.

Goffman, with no known Intelligence experience, is more known for having written on the nuclear issue a few years ago, proposing a radical change to Israel’s strategic deterrence doctrine.

As head of the Mossad, Goffman reports directly and exclusively to Netanyahu. In Israel, the PM is also the Head of the Atomic Energy Commission. “It seems that more than thinking outside the box, Goffman thinks in Netanyahu’s terms”, Meir writes.

Through the ‘Nixon-Golda Understandings’ initiated by Henry Kissinger fifty years ago Israel was granted a unique American exemption from the obligation to join the NPT treaty. The U.S., for its part, set conditions for this unique nuclear status: Israel would not declare that it had nuclear weapons and would not conduct a nuclear test. This is Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity.

A possible reason for Netanyahu contemplating moving away from official ‘ambiguity’ is what Shemuel Meir calls the ‘Trump effect’:

“On the one hand, there is a U.S. president who gave Israel the green light to attack the nuclear sites when his national intelligence assessed that Iran was not building nuclear weapons. Yet, on the other hand, there stands a volatile and unpredictable man”.

“A President who declared that all nuclear sites had been ‘obliterated’ offers no certainty that he will give Netanyahu the option for a second round of preventive war, in contrast to Netanyahu’s assertion of Israeli freedom of action whenever signs, (real or not), of the renewal of the Iranian nuclear program are discovered”.

Well, Mossad just has declared that “Iran is just waiting for the chance to build a nuclear bomb. They want to wipe Israel off the map. We’ll find their agents. We’ll deal with them. Justice will be done” — said David Barnea, the out-going Mossad Chief.

The change of leadership at Mossad may intentionally signal that the nuclear issue in respect to Iran will be on the table at the end-of-year summit.

On this vital issue, Netanyahu may also determine whether Trump, once an ‘asset’, has now become a liability.

“If he stays in office and remains adamant on pursuing financial gains while enjoying a pro-Zionist aura and delivering nothing substantial for Israel, I just can’t see how they’re going to let him continue”, Mizrahi speculates.

“They’d much rather he just disappeared”.

Yet, Vice-President JD Vance now is tainted too. “Systematic delegitimization of Jews” came today from the U.S. Vice-President, writes Anna Barsky in Ma’ariv:

“There is a difference between dislike for Israel and anti-Semitism” – this is what the Vice-President of the U.S., J. D. Vance, wrote on social media”, Barsky wrote.

“From the perspective of Israel, there is nothing more disturbing than this short, almost casual text. Not because it is surprising, not because it is blatant, but because of what it symbolizes — an open adoption, on the part of senior U.S. administration officials, of an ideological narrative that seeks to separate attitudes towards Israel from attitudes towards Jews and to legitimize deep hostility towards the Jewish state, while maintaining a clean moral façade”.

Perhaps – paraphrasing Anna Barsky – Israel is now realising that ‘realities in the region’ have changed.

Source