Trump’s “Bothsidesism” on the Gaza War Imperils Israel

Moral blindness is not the path to peace.

Israeli troops deploy at a position by Israel’s border with Gaza on May 20, 2025. (The Times of Israel)

President Trump’s envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, says that Trump “continues to support Israel” and adds:

“He may say, ‘Hey, let’s try to end the [Gaza] war,’ and he may be firm about it, but his support for Israel is ironclad. . . . The president is very clear—he wants things to come to an end.”

The drift of Boehler’s words is that Trump “wants [the war] to come to an end” as distinct from Israel. Israelis are suffering from this war much more than Trump, and would be overjoyed if it were to come to an end—but on terms Israel can live with, terms that would not guarantee more wars in the future.

A recent survey found

overwhelming opposition [among Israelis] to Hamas remaining in power in any form. Some 85% of respondents said they oppose Hamas maintaining a military force in Gaza, while 81% said they oppose Hamas playing any civilian governance role.

Reports from the still-continuing, mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Doha indicate that’s the sticking point between the two sides. Hamas claims to be prepared to free all the remaining hostages in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza—which could only mean continued Hamas rule in Gaza, even if behind the thin veneer of a “technocratic” administration.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office says the Israeli team at Doha is

“working to exhaust every chance for a deal,” whether based on the US-proposed [interim] Witkoff framework or as part of a broader end to hostilities that would include the release of all hostages, the exile of Hamas militants, and disarmament in the Gaza Strip.

According to all reports from Doha, Hamas flatly refuses the Witkoff framework (while Israel accepts it); and it doesn’t see its current situation as dire enough to say yes to its leaders’ exile from Gaza and its forces’ disarmament there..

The outcome of this impasse is—the current phase of the war in Gaza. With Hamas intransigent, with Israeli hostages continuing to be held in tunnels under appalling conditions, Israel is trying to compel flexibility from Hamas—or, if it can’t be done, to overpower it.

What’s disappointing about President Trump’s public rhetoric about the Gaza war is that it too closely resembles his rhetoric about the Russia–Ukraine war.

Yes, war is terrible, and in both these wars, people on both sides are dying. So, the president says—these wars must end.

But that leaves out the fact that in both these wars, there is an attacker and a defender. In both wars, the attacker does not care about how many lives are lost, but about achieving a goal—in President Putin’s case, the military conquest of all of Ukraine, as a springboard to further conquests; in Hamas’s case, to survive the war and go on harassing and attacking Israel, in tandem with other jihadist actors, until it is destroyed.

Trump’s support for Israel is not “ironclad” unless he can make that basic distinction between Israel and a terrorist, jihadist enemy.

Unfortunately, instead he appears to be joining—or leading—other Western countries in ramping up pressure on Israel. The result is the weakening and endangerment of Israel and the encouragement of Hamas’s intransigence and empowerment of its terror.