Rising international frustration with the United States over the Gaza conflict surfaced at this week’s United Nations General Assembly, as Washington allies recognised Palestine as a state, posing a major test for 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, 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 Trump with a strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar earlier this month 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 U.S. accepted without objection, amid global condemnation of a widening humanitarian crisis in the coastal strip.
And defying Trump’s warnings against what he called a gift to Hamas, a group of U.S. allies, including Britain, France, Canada and Australia, announced just before and during the U.N. 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 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 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 Tuesday that if 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 U.S. 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,” Macron told France’s BFM TV from New York.
Some analysts see Trump’s unwillingness to apply Washington’s leverage with 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 Netanyahu will act in what he considers his own and Israel’s interests and that there is little the U.S. president can do to change that.
Still others speculate that 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 Won’t Be Swayed
Despite appearing less engaged on Gaza recently, Trump met on the U.N. sidelines on Tuesday with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan.
He was expected to lay out U.S. 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 Trump has at times expressed impatience with Netanyahu’s handling of the war, he made clear in his U.N. speech on Tuesday 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 only serve to “encourage continued conflict” by giving Hamas a “reward for these horrible atrocities,” 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 U.N. gathering did not directly chastise Trump for his stance, some analysts saw a clear message to the U.S. 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 U.S. is Israel’s chief arms supplier and historically acts as its diplomatic shield at the U.N. and other world bodies. Last week, the U.S. vetoed a draft Security Council resolution that would have demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Trump, however, has given no sign he will use those pressure points.
Even after Israel bombed a Hamas office in the territory of U.S. ally Qatar, he held a tense phone call with Netanyahu but took no action.
No matter how many countries recognise Palestinian independence, full U.N. membership would require approval by the Security Council, where the United States has a veto.
(With inputs from Reuters)
