And?
Israel gets pushed to the back of the line……
Donald IS in it FOR the Money on this Go Around…
Israel hunting Hamas HAS NOT been something important to the American President….
(It actually probably annoy’s him)
The longer it goes on?
The LESS Trump is gonna be happy…..
Foreign Affairs distarctions ARE NOT Important to this President…
When U.S. President Donald Trump won his reelection bid last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his aides were relieved.
Indeed, a President Kamala Harris would have been irksome — even potentially dangerous — for Bibi. He likely would have faced efforts to coerce him into a credible day-after plan for Gaza aimed at reviving the two-state solution — a bomb that would have blown apart his coalition government. And he would have had to deal with inevitable U.S. threats to cut off military aid, which could well have been acted on.
But with Trump back in the White House instead, Netanyahu and his aides knew the Israeli leader would gain a much freer hand in Gaza, and likely become even more unbound than he was with former U.S. President Joe Biden in office. And so it has proven: Netanyahu suffered no consequences for launching surprise airstrikes on Gaza and breaking the ceasefire with Hamas.
But that might be about to change.
As this column predicted back in November, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. While Netanyahu did gain a freer hand in Gaza for a while, the two leaders don’t actually see eye-to-eye on much else. And with Trump’s three day-visit to the Gulf this week, that may become more apparent.
The U.S. president will first be stopping in Saudi Arabia for talks with the de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, followed by Qatar and then the United Arab Emirates. Glaringly, there is no visit to Israel on his schedule.
The tour is a repeat of his first trip as U.S. president back in 2017. And as per usual with Trump, all will be transactional. He’s looking for quick wins and multibillion dollar deals on oil and trade, and investment he can advertise back home, said Steven Cook, a Middle East expert with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Speaking to reporters at a media briefing last week, Cook noted the Saudi crown already announced his intention to invest $600 billion in the U.S. — possibly up to a trillion dollars — and both the Qataris and Emiratis are poised to ink deals as well. “It’s important to recognize that the president’s approach to foreign policy is heavily influenced by … his version of economic statecraft, which is to look towards the wealthy states in the Gulf and their very large sovereign wealth funds as sources of investment in the United States,” he explained….
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For Trump, money speaks louder than anything else, and Gulf leaders will be looking for quid pro quos. Ending the war in Gaza will be high on their list — a war that Bibi, largely for the maintenance of his own rambunctious coalition and to avoid elections, is determined to continue, if not expand.
The Gulf countries have also underlined, time and again, the need for a return to two-state negotiations. Saudi leaders, for instance, have insisted there can be no “normalization” of relations with Israel without clear diplomatic movement in that direction.
Finally — and unlike in 2017 — these leaders want a nuclear deal with Iran, as they crave regional stability. They see an opportunity to establish some calm now that Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, have been sorely damaged and Tehran’s Syrian ally Bashar Assad has fallen. And while the Saudis had launched a war on the Iran-backed Houthis in 2015, this time around, they want the conflict in Yemen to end. Hence, their support for Trump’s deal to stop bombing Houthis in return for their promise to cease targeting U.S. shipping in the Red Sea….
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And ahead of Trump’s Gulf trip, the mood music from his team appears to be changing, with Witkoff abruptly criticizing Israel for prolonging the war in Gaza and arguing that a new ceasefire and hostage deal are the correct next steps. According to a report by Israel’s Channel 12, he told the families of Israeli captives still being held by Hamas: “We want to bring the hostages home, but Israel is not prepared to end the war.”
Even Trump himself has, for the first time, explicitly called for the war to end.
So, it seems Netanyahu may soon learn what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also found out the hard way: For Trump, Gaza and Ukraine are sideshows, and he doesn’t want them disrupting his bigger diplomatic agenda of resets and mega commercial deals….
image…The U.S. president will first be stopping in Saudi Arabia for talks with the de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. | Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty
Like I said…..
Trump Says Saudis Will Invest $600 Billion in U.S.
President Donald Trump said he has secured $600 billion in investment commitments during a summit in Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg reports.
The pact includes U.S. defense sales valued at nearly $142 billion, providing Saudi Arabia with “state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen U.S. defense firms.
President Donald Trump kicks off the first major international trip of his second term Tuesday in a region where his family business has grown significantly in recent months, presenting his administration with more potential conflicts of interest than ever.
The president’s sons, who head the Trump Organization, have spent the past few weeks crisscrossing the Middle East, laying the groundwork for deals that will benefit the company and, in some instances, Trump himself. Government watchdogs, presidential historians and other critics say it is an escalation of unethical and even unconstitutional conflicts between the interests of the United States and its president.
A week before Trump was scheduled to land in Saudi Arabia for a trip that would also take him to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, his son, Eric, spoke to a crowded convention center in Dubai about the Trump Organization’s plans to build an 80-floor hotel and residential tower there. He boasted that the “incredible icon” would “redefine luxury” and have the highest infinity-edge pool in the world, overlooking the towering Burj Khalifa building….
More…
And he don’t Give a Shit about this …..
Why?
He owns the Justice Dept and Most of Congress….