President Donald Trump will visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates next week to advance a burst of high issues negotiations, but his journey comes when cracks seem to have appeared in his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On the agenda, revive the talks hostage with Israel and Hamas, exploring an out of the ramp for the Russian-Ukraine war and potentially a civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, even if the kingdom refuses to normalize links with Israel.
However, an apparent cold between Trump and Netanyahu drew the attention of the Middle East observers.
Yanir Cozin, Radio of the Israeli army radio, said this week that Trump had “made contact” with the Israeli chief. This report has not been confirmed independently, but it aligns with an emerging perception in Israeli political circles that the Trump-Netanyahu axis can be shunned.
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President Donald Trump, on the right, meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a meeting where Trump announced nuclear talks with Iran, Washington, DC, April 7, 2025 (Reuters / Kevin Mohatt)
“There is always a method of the president’s madness, so to speak,” said Scott Feltman, executive vice-president of the Israeli fund. “There is a dominant thought that [Trump] Even, Israel stands by his own two feet … to a certain extent, he can give a little love to the Prime Minister. “”
Sources said to Reuters Trump is ready to move forward with a civilian nuclear agreement with Riyadh, even if Saudi Arabia sticks to the normalization of relations with Israel – a dramatic change in its first administration and Biden, which had linked such transactions to wider standardization objectives.
For Israel, this change can be disturbing. Riyadh has long insisted on the creation of a Palestinian state as a prerequisite for complete links with Israel, a result that Netanyahu rejected.
During the weekend, it was revealed that Trump was in talks with Doha officials of a potential agreement for Qatar to lend a throw to the United States to replace Air Force. Israeli supporters have long been skeptical about Qatar, saying that he has links with Hamas.
Meanwhile, frustration in Jerusalem increased this week when the United States has concluded a cease-fire agreement with Yemen Houthi activists. The agreement, negotiated without Israeli contribution, forced the Houthis to interrupt the attacks on the navigation routes of the Red Sea, but did not mention their attacks against Israel.
“Trump, to a large extent, mainly threw Israel under the bus,” said Avi Melamed, former Israeli intelligence official and regional analyst. “I think the Israeli government is perplexed, embarrassed … in particular in the context of the Houthis.”
Netanyahu clearly said that Israel would not count on the United States to manage the Houthi threat. “Israel will defend himself by his own forces,” he said Defense Minister Israel Katz echoing this position on Thursday.
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American and Saudi flags float on the main Riyadh highways before President Donald Trump arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 12, 2025. (Reuters / Hamad I Mohammed)
Despite rhetoric, the United States continues to support the defenses of Israel. On Friday, an American missile system intercepted rockets drawn to Israel by Houthi forces.
“The United States is not required to obtain the authorization of Israel to take a certain type of arrangement that would prevent Houthis from shooting our ships,” the American ambassador Mike Huckabee of Israel said this week.
However, Huckabee has shot down any report of tensions between the two world leaders.
“It is reckless and irresponsible for the press to allege that @potus and @israelipm do not get along”, ” Huckabee Said in an article on X. “Bibi spent more time with @realdonaldtrump than I did in the last 3 months and I am his ambassador! The relationship between us and Israel remains strong!”
“Israel had no best friends in his history than President Trump. We continue to work closely with our Israel ally to ensure that the remaining hostages in Gaza are released, Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon and to strengthen regional security in the Middle East,” the spokesman for the National Security Council James Hewitt told Fox News.
“It is reckless and irresponsible for the press to claim that @potus and @israelipm do not get along,” the American ambassador for Israel Mike Huckabee said on the left. (Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Other experts warn against reading too much in friction.
“The Israelis have never had false impressions that the United States struck the Houthis to defend Israel,” said Gregg Romanesque of the Middle East forum. “It was to protect global trade … and it is not as if the United States had abandoned Israel.”
Roman has also minimized tensions on the potential Saudi nuclear agreement. “I think that Saudi Arabia is safer, at the end of the day, will lead to a safer Israel.”
Regional uncertainty is the addition of Netanyahu’s silence to Iran. Although his government has achieved recent gains against Iranian proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah and Assad regime – he has so far been to weigh publicly on nuclear negotiations with Tehran.
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However, Netanyahu says that he remains in close contact with the Trump team on Iran. “I told President Trump that I hope that is what the negotiators will do,” he recently told journalists. “We are in close contact with the United States. But I said in one way or another – Iran will have no nuclear weapons.”
Trump “is not planned to visit Israel during this trip, and I actually think that it could very well be a good thing, because he can see that he hears the Sunni states that they are just as upset by the path which is currently taking place with negotiations with Iran,” said Feltman. “”They have just as much to lose from an Iranian nuclear regime. “”
