The architects of a grand Middle Eastern redesign find themselves trapped by the forces they unleashed. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, two leaders who shared a conviction that the region’s old order could be dismantled and rebuilt in their image, now confront the prospect of a permanent crisis. Their ambitiouns, born of summitry and unilateral action, have produced not stability but a volatile landscape where every new shock deepens the fault lines.
From the outset, the Trump administration’s Middle East policy was defined by rupture. The 2020 Abraham Accords sought to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states, bypassing the Palestinian question that had long been the centrepiece of regional diplomacy. Netanyahu, buoyed by Washington’s retreat from the Iran nuclear deal and the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem, saw an opportunity to cement Israeli dominance. Yet the accords, for all their diplomatic fanfare, merely suppressed the underlying tensions. They did not resolve the occupation, nor did they address the grievances that fuel militancy from Gaza to the West Bank.
The Trump-Netanyahu strategy relied on the assumption that military and economic might could remake reality. The 2023 war in Gaza shattered that premise. Hamas’s attack on October 7th was a brutal reminder that unresolved conflicts do not disappear; they fester. The ensuing Israeli campaign, described by the International Court of Justice as a plausible genocide, has killed tens of thousands, displaced nearly two million, and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that has isolated Israel internationally. The US, even under President Joe Biden, has struggled to calibrate its response, caught between stated support for a two-state solution and the reality of Israeli refusal to countenance Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu’s domestic position is fragile. His coalition depends on far-right parties that advocate for annexation and ethnic cleansing. Any move towards a ceasefire or political accommodation risks collapsing his government. Trump, meanwhile, faces his own legal battles and a political landscape where isolationism gains traction. The risk of a wider regional war looms: Hezbollah’s skirmishes with Israel on the Lebanon border, Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, and Iranian provocations all raise the stakes. A single miscalculation could spiral into a conflict involving Iran, the US, and regional proxies.
The permacrisis becomes self-reinforcing. Each new outbreak of violence entrenches positions, radicalises populations, and erodes the credibility of moderate voices. The Palestinian Authority, already weak, loses legitimacy. Israeli society, traumatised by October 7th, leans harder into security-first thinking. The US, distracted by domestic polarisation and global challengers like China, lacks the bandwidth for sustained engagement. The result is a Middle East where no one can see an exit.
Diplomatic initiatives exist on paper: the Saudi-led peace plan, the Arab Peace Initiative, the two-state roadmap. But they gather dust because the political conditions for implementation are absent. The Trump-Netanyahu vision was predicated on the idea that one could build a new order on the ruins of the old. Instead, they have built a labyrinth. The question now is not whether the region can be stabilised, but whether the architects themselves can escape the catastrophe they helped to create.
