In the picture
Netanyahu's call to Qatar, at Trump's direction, from the Oval conference room [White House].
From their moods, the opposite was inferred for their presidencies. From Barack Obama's reflective character and moderate ways, substantial steps towards peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were imagined, and from the impetuous and fluctuating Donald Trump, a clash without truce was expected, even though the returned president promised to put an immediate end to all wars (nothing reliable precisely for that reason). And it has been the other way around as far as the core topic process in the Middle East is concerned, at least as long as the agreement reached on Gaza holds.
Obama became the first U.S. president in more than forty years without achieving any major breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "No president has promised so much and achieved less than Obama" assessed Brookings Institution, the leading Washington think-tank with Democratic sympathies, at the end of his eight years in office, which had begun with the appointment, on his second day in the White House, of a special envoy to the area, George Mitchell.
The situations, of course, are different. In Obama's case, it was a matter of finding political formulas that would establish a lasting institutional framework , with the progression towards a Palestinian state and a comprehensive solution, which is always difficult to negotiate. Trump, on the contrary, has had to deal with the stalemate of a specific war, the resolution of which only addresses part of the historic conflict. All in all, a different approach to the problem by one president and the other has had a lot to do with the respective failure and success: Obama wanted to be equidistant and 'mistreated' Netanyahu (Israeli prime minister during his entire presidency), while Trump embraced him from the beginning.
As soon as he was sworn into position, Obama made an effort to reach out to the Islamic world, in an effort to correct the anti-Muslim image that the United States had carved for itself with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He gave great symbolism to his speech He gave great symbolism to his "new beginning" speech in Cairo in June 2009, but neglected to cultivate the relationship with Israel, which went from bad to worse due to mutual rancor between Obama and Netanyahu. The U.S. president did not overcome his irritation with the Israeli prime minister and the latter was directly distrustful of any proposal the White House might make to him.
Such a poor relationship, for so long, had not occurred under any previous presidency. Indeed, any progress since Nixon had come about because Israel felt understood and supported, if equally demanding, by Washington. To trust the United States, Israel demands that the superpower go along with it in certain extremes: for example, Reagan opened the first official dialogue with the PLO in 1988, having previously reassured Israel by authorizing it to destroy that organization's presence in southern Lebanon during the 1982 Israeli invasion.
Bill Clinton also made progress thanks to his closeness to the Israelis during his several visits to the country; only by generating trust in this way did he obtain some resignations or changes of position in Tel Aviv. It is true that this Democratic presidency basically coincided with Labor governments (those of Rabin, Peres and Barak, although a first-time Netanyahu also governed in between) and that Obama did not have an ideologically close counterpart to generate harmony; in any case, Clinton offered warmth as opposed to the cold and rational Obama.
The fact of perceiving Trump on his side has made it easier for Netanyahu to accept the White House plan to end the war in Gaza. The Israeli Prime Minister was pushed by other imperatives (pressure from the families of the prisoners taken by Hamas; the widespread dissatisfaction of Israeli citizens; international pressure...), but in the final written request he had to give in to the one who until now had given him so much support precisely in the destruction of Gaza.
Like Obama, Trump opened his presidency - his first - with a symbolic trip to the Middle East (the one in which he was seen in Saudi Arabia in the middle of a ceremonial dance), and the fruit of that initial rapprochement were the Abraham agreements signed almost four years later, which already constituted a success in Trump's diplomatic record in relation to the Middle East. Trump has deepened his staff connection with the Gulf countries without ceasing to embrace Netanyahu, building close trust with mediators such as Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of Jewish origin.
That same script is basically the one he is following in his dealings with Russia to try to end the war in Ukraine: get so close to Putin (the supposedly strong party in that conflict) that Putin agrees to come to the negotiating table. Many are scandalized by Trump's condescension toward Putin, but it probably has a purposeas has been demonstrated in the case of Netanyahu.
Emili J. Blasco is director of GASS and of the Applied Geopolitics program at the University of Navarra.