Israeli officials have put a brave face on President Donald Trump bypassing them on a Middle East trip this week, but his decision to do so is the latest to sow doubt in Israel about where the United States stands in Washington\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, a few days after announcing plans for an expanded military operation in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s office said it had been informed by the US of an agreement to release American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, after talks between Washington and Hamas that did not include Israel.<\/p>\n
Trump, who will be visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, also caused consternation in Israel last week by abruptly announcing the US would stop bombing Houthis in Yemen, days after a Houthi missile hit near Israel\u2019s main airport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe message to the region was clear: Israel is no longer a top US priority,\u201d wrote Itamar Eichner, diplomatic correspondent for Israeli news outlets Ynet, echoing media commentators across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n
One Israeli official said Trump\u2019s announcement on the Houthis was \u201ckind of an embarrassment\u201d and that the president acts \u201cfor good and for bad\u201d.<\/p>\n
Israel has been talking to the US about the post-conflict future of Gaza, and officials say relations at the official level remain strong, but some officials acknowledge being blindsided by Trump\u2019s decision-making.<\/p>\n
One senior official in Netanyahu\u2019s circle, who declined to be identified by name, said there was \u201cchaos\u201d in the Trump administration, with everything dependent on what the president decided at any given moment.<\/p>\n
Sometimes that helped Israel, and sometimes it did not, the official said.<\/p>\n
The decision on the Houthis, which was not discussed with Israel beforehand, compounded Israeli unease at US talks with Iran over Tehran\u2019s nuclear programme, which could blunt any Israeli threat of military action against its arch-enemy.<\/p>\n
Israel faced further alarm after Reuters reported that the US was no longer demanding Saudi Arabia normalise ties with Israel as a condition for progress on civil nuclear cooperation talks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe coordinate. It doesn\u2019t mean you must fully agree 100 per cent on every issue,\u201d Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US is a sovereign state. Israel is a sovereign state. But I believe we have a very, very big common ground of positions with this administration, more than in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
In March, Trump\u2019s hostage negotiator, Adam Boehler, held what Hamas described as \u201cvery helpful\u201d meetings with the Palestinian fighter group that bypassed Israel and focused on releasing Alexander.<\/p>\n
Last week, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee denied that Trump was distancing himself from Israel. He said the relationship was often described as ironclad and \u201cthat word is still operative\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israeli officials have put a brave face on President Donald Trump bypassing them on a Middle East trip this week, but his decision to do so is the latest to sow doubt in Israel about where the United States stands in Washington\u2019s priorities. On Sunday, a few days after announcing plans for an expanded military […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9062"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9064,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9062\/revisions\/9064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}