Netanyahu Isolated as Trump Losing Patience & UK Suspends Trade Talks, Joining France & Canada to Threaten Sanctions on Israel

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Netanyahu Isolated as Trump Losing Patience & UK Suspends Trade Talks, Joining France & Canada to Threaten Sanctions on Israel

- A Radical Dispatch

1) Netanyahu Has Overplayed His Hand

Britain has suspended trade talks with Israel over Gaza. The UK has also joined France and Canada in threatening sanctions against Israel unless the renewed onslaught against Palestinians stops. Meanwhile, President Trump is reported to also be losing patience with his ostensible ally.

Only twenty days after the October 7th attacks, we at Radical Media said this would be the case.

What has happened within the space of the last few months is a series of events that indicate rapidly deteriorating public sympathy for Israel over its ethnic cleansing of Gaza. These began with President Trump but quickly spread to Israel’s other Western allies.

The Times reports 20th May 2025:

“The president seemed genuinely concerned at the plight of the Palestinians in the territory, sources familiar with his conversations during the tour said. He had also grown increasingly impatient with Netanyahu, ‘who he didn’t even like’, one source emphasised, and who has made a career of running circles around US presidents since Bill Clinton. Trump is not like his predecessors, and world leaders have learnt to tread carefully around the mercurial president who can turn on a dime if sufficiently cajoled by a confidant or friend.”

Trump has made his displeasure at Netanyahu’s intransigence clear. Nearly two weeks ago, US Defence Secretary Hegseth cancelled a planned meeting in Israel.

The Middle East Eye reports 9th May 2025:

“For months, Trump has scorned Netanyahu on the talks as his closest media allies attack ‘Mossad agents’ trying to hamstring the US leader. By his own admission, Trump even resisted Israeli pressure to launch a preemptive attack on the Islamic Republic. At the same time, Trump gave Netanyahu his full backing to wage war on Gaza and choke it of supplies. He also won plaudits in Israel for unleashing a bombing campaign on the Houthis in Yemen. Now, Trump is moving to silence the guns in Yemen and come to an accommodation with Israel on Gaza that is upsetting Netanyahu’s base. ‘At this stage, it's clear Trump will take some big decisions unilaterally without significant consideration of Israeli interests when he wants to, like on Iran or Yemen,’ Michael Wahid Hanna, director of the US programme at International Crisis Group, told MEE…On Friday, Israeli media reported that US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth had cancelled an upcoming visit to Israel. The visit was scheduled to begin a day before Trump's visit to the Gulf on 13 May. Hegseth was set to meet Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz.”

This week, it was Vice President JD Vance’s turn to similarly cancel a trip to Israel.

Axios reports 19th May 2025:

“Vice President JD Vance considered traveling to Israel on Tuesday but decided against it due to the expansion of Israel's military operation in Gaza, a senior U.S. official told Axios…The U.S. official said Vance made the decision because he didn't want his trip to suggest the Trump administration endorsed the Israeli decision to launch a massive operation at a time when the U.S. is pushing for a ceasefire and hostage deal.”

American diplomatic displeasure at Israel is palpable and has travelled across the Atlantic. Yesterday, the UK suspended trade talks with Israel.

The BBC reports 20th May 2025:

“The UK's Foreign Secretary David Lammy said ‘we are entering a dark new phase of this conflict’ as he announced the UK was suspending trade negotiation with Israel.”

Britain also joined France and Canada to threaten sanctions against Israel.

The Times reports 20th May 2025:

“Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney have warned that the human suffering in Gaza is ‘intolerable’ and said that Israel is at risk of breaching international law. In a joint statement on Monday, the leaders of Britain, France and Canada told Israel that it faced sanctions and said the announcement that a basic quantity of food would enter Gaza was ‘wholly inadequate’. They called on Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to stop military operations and immediately allow humanitarian aid into the region.”

Meanwhile, China has accused Israel of war crimes during a hearing at the International Court of Justice.

Such a sharp turning of tides comes after US public opinion is shown to be rapidly swinging against Israel in favour of Palestinians.

Here is that Gallup survey.

Gallup reports 6th March 2025:

“Although Americans remain more likely to say their sympathies in the Middle East situation are with the Israelis rather than the Palestinians, the 46% expressing support for Israel is the lowest in 25 years of Gallup’s annual tracking of this measure on its World Affairs survey. The previous 51% low point in this trend of Americans’ sympathy for Israelis was recorded both last year and in 2001. At the same time, the 33% of U.S. adults who now say they sympathize with the Palestinians is up six percentage points from last year and the highest reading by two points.”

Previously unquestioning corporate media outlets in both Washington DC and New York have recently reflected this swing by publishing strongly worded opinion pieces stating openly that Netanyahu is not America’s ally.

The Hill Opinion reports 18th May 2025:

“Antisemitism is real. It is ugly, persistent and absolutely worth condemning at every turn. But criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu — the man, the politician, the schemer — is not antisemitism. It’s realism, and it’s long overdue. So when Donald Trump bypassed Israel on his recent Middle East tour, choosing instead to shake hands in Riyadh and Doha while skipping Tel Aviv altogether, it wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t betrayal. It was distance. It was pragmatism. It was a reminder that the U.S. is the superpower — not a client state, not a donor, not a servant. And it doesn’t need to stop in Tel Aviv to make that point. That distance says something the political class in America has been afraid to utter for far too long: Benjamin Netanyahu is no friend of the U.S. He may call himself an ally. He may speak before Congress. He may wrap himself in shared values and talk about Western civilization. But strip away the optics, and you’re left with a man desperately clinging to power, willing to endanger global stability, fan the flames of war, and burn bridges with the very country he pretends to revere — if it means keeping himself out of a jail cell.”

New York Times reports by Thomas Friedman, 9th May 2025:

Even Netanyahu himself is now seeing the writing on the wall, declaring this week that Isreal will need to wean itself off US security aid.

The Middle East Eye reports 13th May 2025:

“Some of Trump’s closest media allies, like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, have stepped up their criticism of Israel’s occupation of the occupied West Bank and war on Gaza in a way that would have been unimaginable for the allies of a Republican president two decades ago. Astute political operators sense change is in the air. ‘We receive close to $4bn for arms. I think we will have to wean ourselves off of American security aid, just as we weaned ourselves off of American economic aid,’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, in a potential nod to the the growing power of Trump whisperers who want the US to focus on spending at home, not abroad.”

Such developments would have seemed impossible only a year ago. American patience for Netanyahu’s Israeli war games has finally, after so many decades, worn thin.

2) Netanyahu’s Mistake: Empowering Extremists

The mistakes that led Netanyahu to such global isolation have been piling up. The final straw seems to have been his decision to permanently militarily annex Gaza, in capitulation to his extremist settler coalition government partners.

The Times reports 19th May 2025:

“Israel will take control of the whole of Gaza, Binyamin Netanyahu pledged, as the country’s military warned Palestinians in Khan Yunis to evacuate immediately before ‘an unprecedented attack’.”

Mediated by Qatar, Trump had been backing peace talks between Israel and Hamas, but after Netanyahu resumed his Gaza offensive, Trump’s patience has worn thin.

The Times reports 20th May 2025:

“The US is pushing both sides to accept a compromise in talks mediated by Qatar. The talks so far have failed, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the Gulf country’s prime minister, said on Tuesday, warning that the Israeli operation was ‘undermining any chance of peace’. Israeli media has been replete with claims that Trump is reaching a breaking point with Netanyahu, after months of unflinching support. First, he blindsided Israel by announcing talks with Iran, and then a ceasefire with the Houthis. His envoy, Steve Witkoff, was reported to have accused Israel of prolonging the war.”

The concern is that Netanyahu is not interested in a ceasefire as his real aim has been to ethnically cleanse Gaza all along.

The Times reports 20th May 2025:

“But the US, as well as Britain, France, and Canada, the three countries that threatened Israel with sanctions on Monday if the operation continued, are aware of statements by Netanyahu, and some of his ministers, that the operation named Gideon’s Chariots could aim at destroying any remaining buildings in the territory to encourage the residents to leave once and for all. ‘Gaza will be totally destroyed,’ Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, said. This might be messaging to assuage the government’s hardline support base, but it feeds into accusations by Israel’s opponents that it is seeking to ‘ethnically cleanse’ the territory, something Israel has denied. ‘Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country,’ said Yair Golan, the leader of the Israeli Democrats, expressing widespread fears among the opposition in the country.”

Statements by Netanyahu’s extremist settler coalition partner and finance minister Smotrich haven’t helped in assuaging concerns around ethnic cleansing.

Haaretz Reports 19th May 2025:

“Smotrich defended the government's policy in Gaza from right-wing criticism in a press conference on Monday, stating that the criticism was ‘A mix of populism from someone always trying to be the right of the right and rushing to leak from the cabinet – and a media and left that want to stop the war’."

Smotrich has been insisting that the solution to the war is to occupy all of Gaza immediately.

The Times reports 5th May 2025:

“Some Israelis have already stopped reporting for duty, many citing burnout and others explicitly saying they do not agree with the continuation of fighting. The families call it the ‘Smotrich-Netanyahu plan’, a reference to the hardline finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. He openly said on Monday that the government had agreed for Israel to stay in the Gaza Strip and not leave ‘even in exchange for hostages’. ‘We are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip,’ he told a conference in Jerusalem. ‘We will stop being afraid of the word ‘occupation’.’…Smotrich is backed by extremist Israeli settlers who believe Gaza should be reoccupied by Jews. Israel withdrew its forces and citizens in the unilateral 2005 disengagement under Ariel Sharon, then prime minister, leading to elections in Gaza and a violent takeover by Hamas. ‘Once we occupy and remain in the Gaza Strip, we can start talking about sovereignty,’ Smotrich said.”

Click to play:

This is the context in which the UK, France and Canada have issued their joint statement threatening sanctions. Here is that statement:

The Times reports 20th May 2025:

“In their statement, Starmer, Macron and Carney said:

‘We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We call on the Israeli government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. This must include engaging with the UN to ensure a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian principles.’

The three nations also said that the Israeli government is at risk of ‘breaching international humanitarian law’ by forcing the permanent displacement of Palestinians and condemned the ‘abhorrent’ language used by Netanyahu’s ministers’. The three leaders threatened to take ‘further concrete actions’ if Netanyahu continued to escalate military action or refused to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. This could include targeted sanctions.”

Netanyahu has responded by doubling down.

The Qataris have made it clear that the problem involves a chasm in what the two warring parties are seeking in the negotiations. Hamas is seeking a ceasefire leading to a comprehensive deal, while Israel is simply seeking a ceasefire leading to a return of its hostages, with no further guarantees of any permanent deal.

The Times reports 20th May 2025:

“The US is pressuring both sides to accept a compromise in talks mediated by Qatar…Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, said: ‘This irresponsible, aggressive behaviour undermines any potential chance for peace.’ He added that ‘deep differences’ between Israel and Hamas have frustrated the negotiations. ‘One party is looking for a partial deal that might … lead to a comprehensive deal, and the other party is looking just for a one-off deal … and to end the war and to get all the hostages out…we couldn’t bridge this fundamental gap,’ he said in a speech at an economic forum in Doha.”

Israel’s intransigence in this regard has frustrated Trump to the point where he has started to go around them, carving out his own Middle East policy while sidelining Netanyahu.

The Hill Opinion reports 18th May 2025:

“So let’s not pretend this is about betrayal. The betrayal already happened. Netanyahu has taken American goodwill and weaponized it for years. He’s used evangelical loyalty like a battering ram, leaned on AIPAC to silence critics, and hidden behind accusations of antisemitism every time someone dared to question his motives. Trump, to be blunt, is simply breaking the code of silence. He didn’t need Tel Aviv photo ops this time around. He needed leverage. He needed Gulf oil and Gulf money. And for once, he chose to work around the man who has for too long positioned himself as the gatekeeper to American policy in the region. He acted like a president of a superpower should — on his own terms. Good.”

3) Is Peace Possible?

There is a viable roadmap to peace that has precedence. It is the…

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