Trump shrugs off Netanyahu on Gulf tour

JERUSALEM — When President Donald Trump shook hands with Syria’s new leader and promised to lift sanctions on his country at the Saudi royal palace last week, it was a vivid demonstration of how the president’s Middle East diplomacy has all but sidelined Israel.

“Tough guy, very strong past,” Trump said about President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who once had ties with al-Qaida. Trump said he was ending the sanctions, many of which had been imposed on Syria’s previous government, “to give them a chance at greatness.”

In doing so, Trump was effectively shrugging off the views of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government calls al-Sharaa a “jihadi.” Israel’s military has bombed Syria hundreds of times since December, when rebels led by al-Sharaa ousted President Bashar Assad from power.

In recent decades, under U.S. presidents from both parties, Israel has largely enjoyed a special place at the center of U.S. foreign policy in the region. Netanyahu, who has been in power for much of the past two decades, was always an essential player in the Middle East debate, even as he sometimes infuriated his American counterparts.

There is no indication that the United States is abandoning its historic ties with Israel, or will stop its military and economic support for the country. During his flight on Air Force One from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Doha, Qatar, Trump dismissed concerns about sidelining Israel.

“No not at all,” he told reporters. “This is good for Israel, having a relationship like I have with these countries, Middle Eastern countries, essentially all of them.”

But Trump’s five-day tour through the Middle East last week underscored a new dynamic, one in which Israel — and Netanyahu, in particular — is something of an afterthought. In Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Trump has sought to negotiate peace deals in Iran and Yemen and cut trillion-dollar business deals with the wealthy nations of the Persian Gulf.

He did not make a stop in Israel.

“The overall sense is of shifting attention and perception of interest, mainly to the Gulf States, where the money is,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

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