Why Trump Broke With Bibi Over the Gaza Famine

The Atlantic

2 days ago

A few weeks ago, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu each gave the other something of great symbolic value. Trump excoriated the 'out-of-control' prosecutors responsible for the Israeli prime minister's corruption trial, and Netanyahu nominated the American president for the Nobel Peace Prize he has long coveted.
But whatever goodwill was generated by these gestures quickly dissipated, and was not enough to overcome deeper sources of conflict between the two men: starvation in the Gaza Strip, air strikes in Syria, and the lack of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
Trump in recent days has publicly and repeatedly broken with Netanyahu, dismissing his on-again, off-again ally's attempts to downplay the famine in Gaza, which has drawn international condemnation. Upset by images of dying children, Trump dispatched his diplomatic envoy, Steve Witkoff, to the region partly to pressure Israel to ease the hunger crisis. Meanwhile, the president and his senior aides were blindsided by recent Israeli strikes on Syria and a missile attack that hit Gaza's only Catholic Church.
Trump, two administration officials told us, has come to believe what many in Washington have thought for months: that Netanyahu is looking to prolong the conflict in Gaza, in open defiance of Trump's wish for the war to end. The president and some of his aides think that Israel's military objectives in Gaza were achieved long ago, and that Netanyahu has continued Israel's assault, which has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives, to maintain his own political power. The White House also believes that Netanyahu is taking steps that interfere with a potential cease-fire deal.
Yair Rosenberg: The corrupt bargain behind Gaza's catastrophe
But the two officials said they did not anticipate that Trump would hold Netanyahu accountable in any meaningful sense. (Like others, they spoke with us on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.) Even as Trump has felt disrespected by Netanyahu, his anger hasn't translated into any significant shift in U.S. policy. The president blamed Hamas for the most recent breakdown of cease-fire talks. He resisted joining France and the United Kingdom in their vows this week to recognize a Palestinian state if Israel does not improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza and commit to a peace process. A White House official insisted to us that 'there is no significant rupture' between Trump and Netanyahu and that 'allies can sometimes disagree, even in a very real way.' This morning, seemingly trying to set aside his differences with Netanyahu, Trump wrote on Truth Social: 'The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!'
Netanyahu has a long history of frustrating U.S. presidents. Joe Biden went from wrapping the prime minister in a bear hug in the days after the October 7, 2023, attacks to yelling at him over his prosecution of the war. Trump and Netanyahu were close during the president's first term, until Trump grew angry at his Israeli counterpart for recognizing Biden's 2020 victory. Their relationship has proceeded in fits and starts since then. Trump has hosted Netanyahu at the White House three times in the past six months, including a visit earlier this month, when they exchanged warm words. But Trump did not make a stop in Israel on his recent Middle East trip.
The hunger crisis in Gaza has put a new strain on their relationship. In March, Israel enforced a blockade of the Strip, which is densely populated, preventing food and supplies from reaching Gazans after more than 20 months of war. Human-rights organizations warned this month about widespread famine, particularly among children. Under intense international pressure, Netanyahu has allowed some food aid into the region in recent days, but he has also insisted that there is 'no starvation' in Gaza. Before a meeting with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland on Monday, Trump was asked by reporters whether he agreed with Netanyahu's assessment. 'Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry,' Trump said. Later, he added: 'That's real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can't fake that.'
This is not the first time that Trump has responded to gruesome photos. In 2017, he ordered missile strikes on a Syrian air base after he was shown what he said were 'horrific' images of children killed by chemical weapons days before. Earlier this year, he unleashed some rare tough rhetoric on Vladimir Putin after being shown photos of Ukrainian children killed by a Russian air strike. And this week, the two administration officials told us, Trump was bothered by images of a Russian strike on a nursing home in Kyiv.
Hussein Ibish: Food aid in Gaza has become a horror
Trump's frustration with the ongoing war in Russia has colored his response to what he is now seeing in Gaza, one of the officials and a close outside adviser to the president told us. During the 2024 campaign, Trump frequently boasted that he had kept the world free of conflict during his first term, and he returned to the Oval Office this year pledging to bring the wars in Gaza and Ukraine to a quick close. Instead, both have escalated, to Trump's humiliation. Putin has repeatedly defied Trump's wishes for a cease-fire, causing the president, who so often views foreign policy through a personal lens, to consider finally standing up to the Russian leader. (This week, Trump announced that he was giving Putin 10 days to stop the war in Ukraine or he would greenlight a series of sanctions.) Similarly, Netanyahu's recent strikes in Syria and his rejection of claims about the Gaza famine have angered Trump. The president is eager to stabilize the Middle East—and expand the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Gulf states in his first term—in order to foster business and trade relationships in the region.
Two additional U.S. officials told us that Trump's willingness to contradict Netanyahu reflects less a new breach between the two men than the president's 'America First' approach—that Washington's foreign policy won't be dictated by Israel or any other foreign country. Trump is disinclined to accept Netanyahu's version of events, whether about conditions on the ground in Gaza or about the new government in Syria. When he visits Israel today, Witkoff, the president's envoy, has been tasked with developing his own assessment of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the viability of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American nonprofit established earlier this year to distribute food in the Strip, these two U.S. officials told us. Aides have discussed pushing Israel to dramatically increase the amount of food and supplies it allows into Gaza—so that even if some were stolen by Hamas, as Israel alleges has happened before, enough would find its way into the hands of civilians—while also pressuring the Israeli military to stop firing on civilians.
As Netanyahu faces criticism for prolonging the war, members of his cabinet are trying to make the case that Israel is an asset to Trump's foreign policy. Ron Dermer, Israel's minister of strategic affairs and a former ambassador to Washington, argued in a podcast interview last week with David Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel during Trump's first term, that Israel's importance to American national security is 'going to go higher and higher and higher and higher' as Washington seeks to reduce its presence in the Middle East and focus on competition with China.
Robert F. Worth: The dispute behind the violence in Syria
One of the U.S. officials told us that the president's patience is wearing thin mainly with Hamas, not with the Israeli prime minister. Trump continues to blame the terror group for starting the conflict with Israel, and has largely sided with Israel's view of the war (including by promoting a postwar plan for Gaza as a ' Riviera of the Middle East '). When asked this week about British plans to recognize a Palestinian state, Trump rejected the idea as 'rewarding Hamas.' And just last week, Trump, after a call with Netanyahu, told reporters that Israel needed to 'finish the job' and 'get rid of Hamas' because the group didn't want to strike a deal to release the remaining hostages.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment for this article. A spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister did not respond to our request for comment.
Ultimately, Trump wants the war to end. He is aware of the growing anger toward Israel from noninterventionists in MAGA world, who don't want the U.S. involved in a conflict on the other side of the globe, one of the administration officials and the outside adviser told us. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch Trump supporter, on Monday became the first Republican in Congress to declare the situation in Gaza a 'genocide.' Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson have also sharply criticized Israel. Trump and those close to him are wary of further upsetting some of his most die-hard supporters who have already expressed outrage over his administration's strike on Iran in June and its recent handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Trump was taken aback when several lawmakers and influencers refused to accept his directive to stop fueling the Epstein controversy that has enveloped his White House. And now Netanyahu's defiance has caused an additional rupture in Trump's base—and frustrated the president by creating yet another news cycle he can't control.