US allies’ embrace of Palestinian statehood tests Trump’s Israel policy

WASHINGTON - Growing international frustration with Washington over the war in Gaza spilled into the open at the UN General Assembly this week, with US allies recognising 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, Mr Trump now looks increasingly like a bystander as

Israeli forces escalate their onslaught in the Palestinian enclave,

and he remains reluctant to rein in Washington’s closest regional ally.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blindsided Mr Trump with

a strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar

earlier in September that all but doomed the Trump administration’s latest effort to secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal.

Israel since then has launched a ground assault in Gaza City that the US accepted without objection, amid global condemnation of a widening humanitarian crisis in the coastal strip.

And defying Mr 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 Mr Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think-tank in Washington. “In fact, things are worse than when he entered office.”

With an end to the nearly two-year-old conflict seeming more remote than ever, the apparent sidelining of Mr Trump has added to scepticism 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 said on Sept 23 that if Mr Trump really wants to win the coveted Nobel, 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,” Mr Macron told France’s BFM TV from New York.

Some analysts see Mr Trump’s unwillingness to apply Washington’s leverage with Mr Netanyahu as a realisation 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 Mr Netanyahu will 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 Mr Trump may have been distracted from the Middle East by domestic issues such as the recent murder of conservative activist ally Charlie Kirk, continuing fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the President’s deployment of National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities for what he says are crime-fighting missions.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump will not be swayed

Despite appearing less engaged on Gaza recently, Mr Trump met on the UN sidelines on Sept 23 with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan.

He 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 Mr Trump has at times expressed impatience with Mr Netanyahu’s handling of the war, he made clear in his UN speech on Sept 23 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 serve only to “encourage continued conflict” by giving Hamas a “reward for these horrible atrocities,” Mr Trump said.

France, Britain, Canada, Australia and others have insisted that recognising 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 Mr 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, she said, is “enough”.

The US is Israel’s chief arms supplier and historically acts as its diplomatic shield at the UN and other world bodies. Last week, the US vetoed a draft Security Council resolution that would have demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Mr Trump, however, has given no sign he will 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 Mr Netanyahu but took no action.

No matter how many countries recognise Palestinian independence, full UN membership would require approval by the Security Council, where the US has a veto.

Abraham Accords at risk?

Still, some analysts declined to rule out the possibility that Mr Netanyahu, due to visit the White House on Sept 29 for the fourth time since Mr Trump returned to office, may yet exhaust Mr Trump’s patience.

Israel’s strike in Doha dampened Mr 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 fuelled by anger against the international push for recognition of Palestinian statehood.

The most right-wing government in Israel’s history has declared there will be no Palestinian state as it pushes on with its fight against Hamas following its Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed some 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 Mr 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 Mr Netanyahu is not likely to go ahead without the green light from Mr Trump, who has been non-committal so far.

“Trump is going to publicly let Netanyahu do what he thinks is right, especially in Gaza,” said Mr Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy US national intelligence officer on the Middle East. “But privately, the President and his team could apply some pressure”. REUTERS