John Rees looks at the reasons behind the US president’s Middle East trip, and the tensions with Israel as he tries to revitalize the Abraham Accords

Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East has exposed the instability at the heart of the region to the gaze of the world’s media. The most significant thing of all was where the US President didn’t go. He didn’t go to Israel. His absence was just the most visible sign of the tensions that have been growing between Israel and the US.

Israeli commentators have been fuming about the recent deal that Trump struck with the Houthis in Yemen. Firstly, it was a deal done without Israeli involvement. Secondly, it agreed that the Houthis would stop attacking US ships if the US would stop bombing them. But the deal said nothing about the Houthis halting attacks on Israel. Hours after it was concluded the Houthis struck Ben Gurion airport in Israel. 

Netanyahu has said that Israel has to ‘detox’ from US security support.

Some of the tension is because the renewed Netanyahu offensive in Gaza is significantly different from the Trump plan. That envisaged a US presence in Gaza rather than a new chapter in the ethnic cleansing of the strip.

But if there are tensions between Trump and Netanyahu there are none with the super-rich leaders of the Gulf States. Qatar gifted Trump a $400 million replacement for Airforce One, the dedicated presidential airliner.

Trump struck a $142 billion arms deal with the Saudis, lavishly praising Saudi leader Mohammed Bin Salman. No wonder, since the Saudis had already announced a $600 billion US investment package.

But the real prize was the reintegration of Syria into the Western security structure. The Syrian president was so grateful for Trump lifting sanctions on Syria that he offered to build a Trump Tower in Damascus. The Syrian deal was urged on Trump, as he revealed in his speech in Saudi, by President Erdogan of Turkey, always a key backer of the Syrian forces which took power last year. The Syrian regime is happy to ignore the fact that Israel is illegally occupying more of its territory than ever before. 

In many ways Trump is restarting his first term project of normalising relations between the Arab dictators and the Israeli state. To the Arab dictators this looks more possible if there is a nuclear deal with Iran, which Netanhayu opposes – indeed he wants a military strike on Iran, and in the wake of reverses for Hezbollah and Hamas.

But this project is obstructed more than it is helped by Netanyahu’s genocidal forever war against Gaza. Trump may be looking forward to a post-Netanyahu Israel which can engage more successfully with the Abraham Accords project.