President Donald Trump’s Middle East tour has left Israel apprehensive about a shift in US foreign policy from one rooted in security to a focus on commerce, especially massive arms sales to neighbors that don’t recognize the Jewish state.
The deals themselves appear to be so large — $142 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia and $243 billion to Qatar, with a focus on defense — that some in Israel fear they could reduce the longstanding US guarantee of its regional military superiority, the so-called Qualitative Military Edge.
And that’s only part of the concern. At an investor conference in Riyadh, Trump dismissed neo-conservatives — the foreign policy hawks most supportive of Israel — as clueless interventionists. He also reiterated his desire for a nuclear deal with Iran, Israel’s arch-rival. “I don’t like permanent enemies,” he said. “I want a deal with Iran.”
The public reaction in Israel has been more muted than shouted. The government doesn’t want to acknowledge the new division with its major ally. Meanwhile many in the security establishment oppose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza rather than focus on returning hostages and pursuing relations with Saudi Arabia.
But that doesn’t make any of them less worried about the recent shift in Trump’s emphasis which, they say, suggests the demise of a decades-long notion — that for regional states the route to Washington passes through Jerusalem.
“After months of pro-Israel statements and unconditional support, it seems that the ones now ‘passing through the gates of hell’ — the very gates Trump recently promised Hamas — are the members of the Israeli government,” said Oded Eilam a former Mossad official who does research at the conservative Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
Even before Trump landed in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Israel was worried. His officials had negotiated directly with Hamas to release an American-Israeli hostage, cut a truce with Yemen’s Houthis that didn’t include stopping the group’s missile attacks on Israel, and started the talks with Iran.
But the week brought another unhappy shock: Trump announced the lifting of economic sanctions on Syria. He met Syria’s President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, whom Israeli officials distrust due to his radical Islamist past.
Dialing into the meeting was one of Sharaa’s key regional backers, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who cut ties with Israel due to the 19-month war in Gaza. Friction between Israel and Turkey has intensified over control and influence in Syria.
Since October 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, triggering the brutal war in Gaza, Israel has taken an aggressive approach to defending its borders, bombing weapons depots of its neighbors and positioning its troops on their territory. A US embrace of Syria could put pressure on Israel to pull back its forces.
“The lifting of sanctions on Damascus came as a total surprise,” said Tamir Hayman, a former head of Israeli military intelligence who runs the Institute for National Security Studies, a centrist think tank. “The thinking was there’d be a gradual move leveraged to secure recognition of Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan Heights and demilitarization.”
Trump says he informed the Israeli government in advance about its plans for Syria. While the US National Security Council didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg, the government’s consistently said it will ensure Israel’s security is maintained.
A key area of Israeli concern is its military edge, known by the acronym QME, a commitment enshrined in US law in 2012. It remains unclear whether the sales announced this week will threaten it, and whether, for example, F-35 fighter jets will be sold to Riyadh, making it the first Middle East country to get them apart from Israel.
Some US lawmakers suggest that Trump is also considering the sale of those stealth aircrafts to Turkey — a move so far vetoed by the US given Turkey’s possession of Russian S-400 aerial defense systems.
Recent opinion polls show a majority of the Israeli public favor pursuing relations with Riyadh over trying to destroy Hamas, in contrast with Netanyahu’s priorities.
“We are seeing some erosion of Israel’s QME,” says Hayman. “That would be more acceptable if it came as part of a diplomatic package including, for example, normalization of ties, but that’s not the case now.”
US-Iran nuclear talks top Israel’s list of concerns regarding US policy. Netanyahu has built his career advocating against a nuclear Iran but appears not to have been given a seat at the table. Trump says he thinks US and Iranian negotiators are getting closer to a deal.
Now, says Ofer Shelach, a former centrist member of the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, Israel may be left alone to face Iran, the Houthis and Hamas in Gaza.
Other Israeli analysts say the lesson from Trump’s Gulf trip is that Israel mustn’t allow itself to be left behind regionally, even if the government continues to reject movement toward a Palestinian state, something Saudi Arabia insists on as part of normalization.
“It’s crucial to find a way to collaborate with regional moderates and reach agreements on Iran and Syria,” says Eran Lerman, vice president of the Jerusalem Center for Strategic Affairs.
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