Analysis
Trump reversed decades of US policy - but that was just part of the show
Was there more to the Netanyahu-Trump meeting than marketing? Hard to tell
February 15, 2017 21:13
2 min read
Was there more to the Netanyahu-Trump meeting than marketing? Hard to tell
February 15, 2017 21:13US President Donald Trump swept away decades of diplomatic orthodoxy on Wednesday when he said at a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House that his administration did not necessarily support a two-state solution.
But then, there was little that was normal about this meeting.
Press conferences are usually held after the leaders have had a chance to meet and discuss issues. Instead, the two leaders this time faced reporters minutes after the Netanyahu couple were met with great pomp outside the White House by both Trumps. The messaging could not have been clearer. This is a president who, unlike Barack Obama, is on the same page as Mr Netanyahu.
The famously irascible President Trump was for once completely on-message, sticking (mostly) to written remarks and answering obviously rehearsed answers to the journalists’ questions. With Mr Netanyahu’s perfectly American-accented English chiming alongside, it looked and sounded more than a double-act than a meeting of leaders from two different countries.
But beyond the carefully crafted messages, honed for weeks in advance by their senior advisors, it was difficult to understand what policy the new Trump-Netanyahu team will be pursuing in the Middle East.
Mr Trump quickly rattled through a checklist of the relevant pro-Israel talking-points — saying that the Jewish people had suffered like no other, that Israel was a unique democracy, that the previous president’s landmark nuclear agreement with Iran was a rotten deal and the United Nations was unfair to Israel. But that did not give a clear indication of how his administration will act in the future.
The line that everyone will be poring over is, of course, President Trump’s departure from established American policy, when he said “I’m looking at two states and one state, and I like the one that both parties like”. But just saying that he would go along with whatever the Israelis and Palestinians prefer is hardly a policy prescription.
Meanwhile, Mr Netanyahu, without specifically saying he still believed in the two-state solution, assured an Israeli reporter that he still stood behind his Bar Ilan Speech delivered eight years ago, in which he first expressed his support for two states. Both men gave broad hints of their support for an outside-in approach to the diplomatic process — in other words a greater involvement of Egypt, Jordan, and the Sunni Gulf states in an attempt to create a wider regional consensus towards a deal with the Palestinians. But it was unclear whether they plan to engage with the Arab states, who are also staunchly in favour of a two-state solution, any time soon. No-one even asked what the Palestinians may be thinking about all this.
There were two moments in which it seemed Mr Trump sounded slightly demanding; once when he said “I’d like you to hold off on settlements for a little bit”, and another when he said, “Both sides will have to make compromises. You know that, right?” But even these remarks were almost certainly approved in advance by the Israeli side and were included to give Mr Netanyahu some political cover from his own right-wing coalition partners, particularly from Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett who warned Mr Netanyahu on Sunday not to mention the two-state solution.
In addition, the tough rhetoric from both leaders on Iran included no policy details.
In response to a question on the outbreak of antisemitic incidents in the US following his election the President described the scale of his electoral victory — a reply that will have worried Jews everywhere. In a moment of pure irony, Mr Netanyahu effectively ended the press conference saying that “there is no greater supporter of the Jewish people and the Jewish state” than Trump.
The bottom line remained, as it was from the start, that this was completely different to any previous reception of Mr Netanyahu at the White House. Quite what this spells for the future, we are still none the wiser.
