PUBLISHED BY The Washington Post May 16, 2025
WorldView
By Ishaan Tharoor
with Rachel Pannett
In Middle East, Trump marginalizes Israel without helping Gaza
Yousef Al-Bayouk weeps over his brothers, Moath and Moataz, who were killed in Israeli strikes, as mourners attend their funeral at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday. (Hatem Khaled/Reuters)
As President Donald Trump’s Middle East sojourn drew to a close, a much-vaunted “grand bargain” bringing peace to a restive region was nowhere in sight. Instead, there were many little ones. Trump will emerge from his tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — three energy-rich Arab monarchies with deep influence in Washington — touting a string of trade and investment deals secured with his prodding. Lucrative agreements for U.S. weaponry, planes and AI chips were forged, while in multiple speeches Trump gushed over the success of these wealthy states ruled by absolutist royals.
In a trip that seemed more about business than geopolitics, Trump still paid lip service to his hopes for peace. He extended a hand to Iran, gesturing to potential future talks over its nuclear program. He announced a truce with Yemen’s Houthi rebels after authorizing a $1 billion bombing campaign that hasn’t dented the Houthis’ capacity to target Israel or Red Sea shipping. To the surprise of even some U.S. officials, he announced the cessation of sanctions on Syria, a critical move to boost the country’s fledgling, transitional regime. And he decried a legacy of U.S. interventionism in the region.
The signals he sent caused consternation in Israel. Ahead of Trump’s trip, Israeli media and officials were already pointing to the way Trump has bypassed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing leader closely allied to the U.S. president who received numerous political gifts from the White House in Trump’s first term.
But in his second term, Trump’s vision for the Middle East is not as yoked to that of Netanyahu. The Israeli leader couldn’t have been pleased with Trump’s overtures to Tehran, his unilateral truce with the Houthis and his opening with Syria, which Israel has relentlessly bombed over recent months. Trump invoked the Abraham Accords — the agreements establishing formal ties between Israel and a clutch of Arab states — but the pacts seemed less of a centerpiece of his efforts this week. For Israel, the prospect of normalization seemed to shift to that of marginalization.
UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan presents the Order of Zayed Medal to President Donald Trump during an official reception in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. (UAE Presidential Court/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
All the while, Israeli forces pounded the embattled Gaza Strip. Bombardments on alleged Hamas militant targets led to dozens of civilian deaths in the past few days. On Thursday alone, local groups said Israeli attacks killed more than 100 people. The director of a hospital in northern Gaza told my colleagues of one incident where they received the bodies of 20 children killed Wednesday. Humanitarian conditions remain dire, with 1 in 5 people in the territory facing starvation amid a months-long Israeli blockade.
Earlier in the week, Netanyahu declared that there was “no way” Israel would halt its war in Gaza, vowing to “complete the mission” and fully eradicate Hamas. The messaging undercut attempts in Doha, Qatar, to restart peace talks between the warring parties. Netanyahu was once more rebuked by the families of hostages held in Hamas captivity who fear the prime minister is prioritizing his political interests and alliance with the Israeli far right over the plight of Israelis still trapped in Gaza.
On Monday, Trump hailed the release of Israeli American Edan Alexander — the last U.S. citizen abducted by Hamas to be freed — and indicated on social media that the decision to return him to Israel was a “step taken in good faith” by Hamas. Implicit in the White House’s messaging was an impatience with Netanyahu, who many see as an impediment to attempts to forge a lasting ceasefire. Some of Netanyahu’s far-right allies have made clear their desire to remove much of the territory’s Palestinian population and occupy it indefinitely.
Trump hasn’t relinquished his strange plan to takeover and redevelop Gaza himself. “Gaza has been a territory of death and destruction for many years,” Trump told reporters. “I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good — make it a freedom zone. Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.”
Whatever comes of that, there’s daylight slipping between Trump and Netanyahu. “For Netanyahu, who used to have his settler allies drive policy in Trump’s first term, Trump 2.0 must present a shock,” Ilan Goldenberg, senior vice president and chief policy officer at J Street, a liberal pro-Israel organization in Washington, wrote in an email memo. “As for Trump, his friends in the Gulf are showering him with deals and wins — when he looks at Benjamin Netanyahu’s and [far-right leader] Itamar Ben Gvir’s Israel he sees only headaches.” That includes an “endless war” in Gaza, Israeli political leadership “bent on sabotaging Iran talks,” and an Israel that doesn’t seem ready to make the political concessions that would be needed before it can further integrate into the region.
Trump’s transactionalism and eagerness to play the peacemaker cuts against Netanyahu’s own agenda. “What you’re seeing is that President Trump has an idea of what is in our interest, and that comes first,” Dennis Ross, a veteran former U.S. diplomat and Middle East envoy, told my colleague Gerry Shih. “He defines the nature of our interests abroad not through a geopolitical or security context, but an economic, financial and trade frame. I think President Trump might have the view that ‘We give them $4 billion a year in military assistance. I do plenty to support the Israelis.’”
In Israel, analysts view the signals emerging from Trump’s trip with alarm. “In Trump’s worldview, Israel is not necessarily a strategic ally in the deep, classic and values-based sense, but more of a ‘premium client,’ perhaps even a Middle Eastern ‘real estate asset,’” wrote Oded Ailam, a former top Israeli intelligence official, in Israel Hayom, a popular daily.
“We must consider the deep changes that are underway within the Republican Party itself and within Trump’s inner circle,” he added, gesturing to the sidelining of neoconservatives and Iran hawks in Trump’s team. “Israel must recognize that Trump in 2025 is a different political creature, and the Republican Party is no longer what it once was.”
1,000 Words
People attend a May 1 rally in Caracas, Venezuela, to show support for Maikelys Antonella Espinoza Bernal, a 2-year-old who was in U.S. custody after her parents were deported. (Ariana Cubillos/AP)
People attend a May 1 rally in Caracas, Venezuela, to show support for Maikelys Antonella Espinoza Bernal, a 2-year-old who was in U.S. custody after her parents were deported. (Ariana Cubillos/AP)
A 2-year-old girl who was left in the United States after both her parents were removed from the country, sparking an international custody dispute, has been returned to Venezuela, according to the child’s family and the Venezuelan government.
The case of Maikelys Antonella Espinoza Bernal drew condemnation from immigrant rights groups and concern about the potential for family separations as the Trump administration looks to expedite migrant removals. The child’s mother was recently deported to Venezuela without her. Her father, meanwhile, was sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador.
Talking Points
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio isn’t anticipating any “major breakthrough” in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, given the relatively low rank of officials sent by Russia. The delegations attending their first direct peace talks in years spent much of Thursday in different cities in Turkey, pointing to the deep divide between the warring sides, our colleagues write.
• An Afrikaner who is one of 60 South African people resettled as refugees under an executive order from President Donald Trump has denied antisemitism claims. Charl Kleinhaus said his social media posts over the past two years about Jewish people and Israel were being taken out of context.
• Trump’s announcement during his Middle East trip that his administration intends to lift wide-ranging sanctions on Syria sparked jubilation in the capital, Damascus, as a population long impoverished by the restrictions was finally able to hope for relief, our colleagues write.
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Freedom lost
Journalist Ulviyya Ali protests media law restrictions on Dec. 28, 2021, in front of the parliament building in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Fargana Novruzova)
Journalist Ulviyya Ali protests media law restrictions on Dec. 28, 2021, in front of the parliament building in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Fargana Novruzova)
Ulviyya Ali took out her phone and rushed to write a letter asserting her innocence. She had not yet been charged with a crime, but she had a hunch that she would soon lose her freedom.
“If you are reading this message, it means I have been arrested on trumped-up charges due to my journalistic activity,” Ali, 31, who was working as a reporter for the U.S. government-funded news outlet Voice of America, wrote in January. “… It is known to everyone that the Azerbaijani state has no tolerance left for independent media.”
Ali — who is known among her friends as “Ulka” and whose legal name is Ulviyya Guliyeva — wrote the letter just before complying with a summons for questioning at the police headquarters in Baku, the capital of the former Soviet republic.
She knew that several other journalists had been detained immediately after they arrived there.
In fact, she had made a habit of sending home-cooked meals to them and their cellmates in recent months.
She prepared for the worst, feeding her two cats and sending photos of herself for friends to publish in case she never returned.
Azerbaijani authorities hit her with a travel ban but allowed her to walk free — until the early hours of May 7, when police raided her home and arrested her.
Ali is being accused of currency smuggling — a charge that has been levied against other journalists in the country — after police claimed they found more than 6,000 euros, or about $6,700, in her home.
Her mother, Ilhama Guliyeva, 58, told The Washington Post that her daughter was then tortured in a pretrial detention facility, with police and interrogators dragging her by the hair, beating her over the head and threatening to “violate her ladyhood” until she surrendered her phone and laptop passwords.
In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that forced Voice of America to immediately cease operations, pausing a more than 80-year mission to promote press freedom and democratic values abroad.
The move has been criticized for potentially endangering VOA journalists — particularly those who could face potential persecution in their home countries if their work visas are canceled, as well as those who report under authoritarian governments that may have been otherwise hesitant to go after reporters working for a U.S. government institution.
Ali lost her job when Trump dismantled the VOA news service in March. That month, she told JAMnews that VOA’s closure would leave Azerbaijan “with nothing but state propaganda.”
Ali is one of at least 25 journalists currently in detention in Azerbaijan, and she was the last remaining journalist to regularly cover court hearings before her arrest. – Kelly Kasulis Cho
Read on: She covered human rights for VOA in Azerbaijan. Now she’s in jail.
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