When did Donald Trump become a liberal Zionist?

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in a press conference at the White House in Washington, DC on Sept. 29. Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Senior Columnist Rob Eshman September 29, 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just agreed to President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan — which almost reads as if it was written by J Street, the liberal Zionist lobbying group that has long pushed for a peaceful two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The plan, which crucially still awaits Hamas’s approval, is a victory for the hostages and Palestinian civilians in Gaza — and for the cause of pragmatism over extremism.

And it introduces the question: How, exactly, did Trump become a liberal Zionist?

For years, Trump had led the Israeli hard right and its American enablers to believe that under his watch, Israel wouldn’t cede an inch of land to the Palestinians. Trump himself floated the idea of a United States-run future Gaza, rebuilt as Palm Beach East.

So what happened? How did a president who just a month ago was trying in vain to get Sudan to accept two million forcibly relocated Gazans come to support a plan that recognizes Palestinian rights, and seeks the kind of compromise pushed by his Democratic and Republican predecessors?

A sharp change in policy

An agreement that secures a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — and opens a path to a two-state solution — is an extraordinary pivot from Trump’s past ideas, as well as those of some of his most significant supporters.

The main principles of the deal, which Trump presented to Arab leaders last week amid the United Nations General Assembly, are the release of all remaining hostages; a permanent ceasefire; a complete phased IDF withdrawal from Gaza; a plan for post-war governance of a demilitarized Gaza that excludes Hamas; the creation of an “International Stabilization Force” from Arab nations that will train and provide support to Palestinian police forces in Gaza; funding from Arab countries for Gaza’s reconstruction, with the undetermined but guaranteed involvement of the Palestinian Authority; and “a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful coexistence.”

“While Gaza redevelopment advances and when the P.A. reform program is faithfully carried out,” reads the penultimate point, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.”

That’s remarkable language, considering that in June, Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said the U.S. was no longer pursuing a two-state solution. “Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” he added, using language used by the annexationist Israeli far-right to refer to the West Bank, which would comprise the core of an independent Palestinian state.

Between such statements and Trump’s past enthusiasm for wresting Gaza away from Palestinians so it could be developed as a “riviera of the Middle East,” Israeli officials who have long pushed for Jewish resettlement of the Gaza Strip and seizure of the West Bank were delighted. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said a U.S.-administered Gaza would be a “real estate bonanza,” and Defense Minister Israel Katz floated plans to forcibly relocate Gaza’s residents out of the way.

The fear of losing control

The most cynical possible reason for Trump’s radical policy shift is that the president wants to appease the Gulf states. We know that Trump, his family and his close associates — including lead negotiator Steven Witkoff — have billions of dollars in investments and potential investments with the Saudis, Qataris and other Arab states. There’s also the matter of America’s longstanding oil and military interests in those countries.

Money matters to Trump. And America’s interest in a stable Gulf no doubt prompted Trump to make sure Netanyahu apologized for striking Qatar.

But I suspect the real lesson here is one we’ve had cause to learn before: Trump’s only real ideological commitment is to Trump winning. And Trump was on the verge of losing the Middle East, big time.

For some time, Trump has been aware that Israel was losing the war for public opinion. In May, he told Netanyahu that the war had gone on long enough, and it was time to “wrap it up.” Instead, Netanyahu kept it going. And Trump watched as countries like the United Kingdom and Canada, which have been steadfast allies and trading partners of Israel, recognized a Palestinian state.

The president began to see that the U.S. was losing its ability to claim that it’s a central force in shaping outcomes in the Middle East.

“Trump has what may be his last opportunity to regain control of the situation,” wrote the Israel Policy Forum’s Michael Koplow before Monday’s White House meeting.

But it’s also possible that Trump had simply finally grasped that  compromise and coexistence are the most logical, pragmatic path forward.

The return of liberal Zionism

That insight could be why Trump told reporters last Thursday that he would under no circumstances allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

“There’s been enough,” he said, “it’s time to stop now.”

That’s a position liberal Zionists have taken, and stood by, since Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967.

Liberal Zionism has become the Rodney Dangerfield of ideologies, getting no respect from anybody. After Oct. 7, many of Israel’s most vocal supporters have suggested that compromise with Palestinians would be naive, or worse, self-destructive. And when Trump floated his Gaza Riviera idea, some eight out of 10 Jewish Israelis said they supported it.

Meanwhile, the American left has come to see “liberal Zionist” as an oxymoronic curse. In their minds, liberal Zionists are just more people who want to maintain Jewish supremacy on land that belongs to Palestinians.

But what none of these critics have yet to propose is a solution that doesn’t entail deporting, killing or discriminating against the 7 million Arabs and 7 million Jews who live, now, in the flesh, between the river and the sea.

Trump’s plan is the liberal Zionist reality check to the Israeli and Palestinian supremacists, and a reminder of why liberal Zionism is the most pragmatic way forward. The plan doesn’t necessarily call for two states for two people — there can be many possible ways to share contested territories — but it does call for compromise and coexistence.

For more than 100 years, Palestinians and Israelis, and their most single-minded supporters, have tried every way to avoid both of those outcomes. The bloodshed and destruction of the last two years is the latest result of their rejection and resistance.

But if Trump can get Hamas to agree to his plans, and hold the Palestinians and Israelis to their word, it will be a huge victory for liberal Zionism — and the world.