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- President Trump said “we have to help” the Palestinians, but there was little progress on ending the Hamas-Israel war in the Gaza Strip.
- Israel launched a new ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
- Trump met with Syria’s new leader, but a rumored meeting with the head of the Palestinian Authority never materialized.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Trump’s four-day visit to the Middle East was marked by a flurry of activity: Billion-dollar trade deals, a meeting with Syria’s new president and diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff with Iran.
But the fate of Palestinian people and the war in Gaza, where the dead are piling up in recent days under an Israeli onslaught, appears to have received short shrift.
Trump finished his visit to the Persian Gulf on Friday, touting his abilities as a deal maker while he forged trade agreements worth hundreds of billions of dollars — his administration says trillions — from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
But despite his repeated insistence that only he could bring a peaceful end to the world’s intractable problems — and saying Friday that “we have to help” Palestinians — there were no breakthroughs on the Israel-Hamas war, and the president repeated his suggestion of U.S. involvement in the Gaza Strip.
Noting the widespread destruction in the territory, Trump said, “I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good — make it a freedom zone. Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.”
1. Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (Jehad Alshrafi / Associated Press) 2. Islam Hajjaj holds her 6-year-old daughter Najwa, who suffers from malnutrition, at a shelter in central Gaza City, on May 11, 2025. Amnesty International accuses Israel on April 29 of committing a ‘’live-streamed genocide’’ against Palestinians by forcibly displacing Gazans and creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged territory, claims Israel dismisses as ‘’blatant lies’’. (Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Trump’s comments Friday came as the Israel military began the first stages of a ground offensive it called “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” — an apparent fulfillment of a threat by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month that he would launch an attack on Gaza to destroy Hamas and liberate detainees if there wasn’t a ceasefire or a hostage deal by the time Trump finished his time in the Middle East.
Trump’s concerns “are deals that benefit the U.S. economy and enhance the U.S.’ global economic positions,” or preventing costly military entanglements in Iran or Yemen, said Mouin Rabbani, a nonresident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, based in Qatar.
“Unlike Syria or Iran,” Rabbani said, “ending the Gaza war provides no economic benefit to the U.S., and doesn’t risk American troops getting involved in a new war.”
Ahead of Trump’s four-day trip, there were moves that had buoyed hopes of a ceasefire or allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, which Israel has blocked for more than two months as aid groups warn of impending famine. On May 12, Hamas released Edan Alexander, a soldier with Israeli and U.S. citizenship and the last American detainee in its hands, as a goodwill gesture to Trump, and there were rumors of a meeting between Trump and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
But that meeting never took place, and instead of a ceasefire, Israel launched strikes that health authorities in the enclave say have killed at least 250 people in the last few days, 45 of them children, according to UNICEF.
Netanyahu insists his aim is to destroy Hamas, which attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and seizing roughly 250 hostages. Israel’s military campaign has so far killed at least 53,000 people in Gaza — including combatants and civilians, but mostly women and children, according to health authorities there — and many believe that toll to be an undercount.
A ceasefire that Trump’s incoming administration brokered in January broke down in mid-March after Israel refused to continue second-stage negotiations.
“We expect the U.S. administration to exert further pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to open the crossings and allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid, food, medicine and fuel to hospitals in the Gaza Strip,” said Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media advisor, in an interview with Agence France-Presse on Friday.
He added that such moves were part of the understandings reached with U.S. envoys during the latest meetings, under which Hamas released Alexander.
Yet there has been little sign of that pressure, despite fears in Israeli circles that Trump’s actions before and during his Middle East trip — which skipped Israel, saw Trump broker a deal with Yemen’s Houthis and lift sanctions on Syria without Israeli input — was a snub to Netanyahu.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he left the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi, on Friday, Trump sidestepped questions about the renewed Israeli offensive, saying, “I think a lot of good things are going to happen over the next month, and we’re going to see.”
“We have to help also out the Palestinians,” he said. “You know, a lot of people are starving in Gaza, so we have to look at both sides.”
On the first day of Trump’s Mideast trip, in Saudi Arabia, he announced that the U.S. was ending sanctions on Syria, now headed by an Islamist government that overthrew longtime dictator Bashar Assad in December. He met Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa and praised him as a “tough guy” and a “fighter.”
Israel views Al-Sharaa’s government as a threat and has made incursions into its territory since Assad’s fall, and launched a withering airstrike campaign to defang the fledgling government’s forces.
When asked whether he knew Israel opposed the lifting of sanctions, Trump said, “I don’t know, I didn’t ask them about that.”
Commentators say that although Washington’s leverage over Israel should make a Gaza ceasefire easier for a Trump administration seeking to project itself as an effective peacemaker, the conflict there remains a low priority for Trump.
“Gaza may seem like low hanging fruit on the surface, but it’s also low political yield — how does acting decisively on Gaza benefit Trump? It doesn’t,” said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.
He added that going along with Netanyahu would be more in line with Trump’s vision for owning and remaking Gaza, while on Iran, Syria and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, it makes sense to separate U.S. interests from Israel’s.
“Palestinians have nothing to offer Trump. And the Gulf states offered their investments for free, with no conditions on Gaza. Gaza is a moral imperative, not a strategic one, and Trump is not known for acting on moral grounds.”
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