The Blogs: The Day After Ukraine: A Warning for Israel

If Trump can pressure Kyiv to sign away its future, he can do the same to Jerusalem — especially with Riyadh and Ankara in the room.

When a superpower tells a bleeding ally, “Sign here or you’re on your own,” that’s not diplomacy. It’s abandonment dressed up as statesmanship.

That, in essence, is what President Donald Trump’s new 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine does. It is being pushed from the White House today with a Thanksgiving deadline and a blunt message for Volodymyr Zelensky: accept it or “fight his little heart out.”

If you live in Israel and still think Trump is the one foreign leader you can always count on, you should study that document very carefully. It’s a preview of how America First can very quickly become Allies Last — Israel included.

What Trump’s Ukraine plan really says

Strip away the soothing talk about “ending the bloodshed,” and four core elements stand out in the 28-point proposal.

It locks in Russian gains.
The plan codifies a territorial “freeze” that forces Ukraine to cede all of Donbas and other occupied areas to Russia, essentially writing Moscow’s land-grab into a U.S.-backed peace.
It caps Ukraine’s future.
Ukraine would be permanently barred from NATO, subjected to strict limits on its armed forces, and constrained in striking military targets deep inside Russia.
It freezes the war, not ends it.
The blueprint envisions demilitarized zones and a de facto new border along current front lines — a Korean-style frozen conflict, not a just settlement.
It puts Trump personally in charge.
Implementation “will be monitored and guaranteed by the Peace Council, headed by President Donald J. Trump,” empowered to impose sanctions for violations.

All of this is wrapped in the language of “security guarantees.” But the bottom line is brutally simple: Sign this Russian-leaning deal, or lose your American lifeline.

That isn’t allyship. It’s coercive deal-making. And it should ring very loud alarm bells in Jerusalem.

Israel, meet your reflection in Kyiv’s mirror

Many Israelis remember Trump as “the best friend Israel ever had in the White House”: the embassy move to Jerusalem, recognition of the Golan, the original Abraham Accords. Those steps mattered. They also encouraged a dangerous illusion: that personal warmth from one president equals a long-term strategic guarantee.

The Ukraine plan shatters that illusion. It shows a sitting U.S. president who is willing to:

Negotiate a blueprint heavily shaped with Moscow, without Ukraine at the table, then present it to Kyiv as a choice between capitulation and abandonment.
Redefine “sovereignty” and “security guarantees” as living under permanent constraints designed in Washington and Moscow, not in the capital of the invaded state.
Treat an ally’s existential red lines as bargaining chips in a larger strategic trade with Russia and Europe.

Suppose Trump can do that to Ukraine while praising its courage. In that case, there is no reason to assume Israel is in some protected category — especially when our security needs clash with his broader regional ambitions.

Gaza, the Board of Peace, and Trump’s bigger Middle East design

Look at what Trump is constructing around Gaza right now.

On November 17, the UN Security Council adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution endorsing his 20-point Gaza peace plan and authorizing an International Stabilization Force (ISF) for at least two years.

Key elements include:

A ceasefire and hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas.
Demilitarization of Gaza, with the ISF mandated to dismantle “terror and offensive infrastructure” and decommission non-state weapons.
A transitional authority, overseen by a yet-to-be fully defined “Board of Peace,” to manage reconstruction and civilian governance. Trump is explicitly cast as the central political architect of this framework.

In other words, just as he proposes to chair a Peace Council to police Ukraine’s settlement, he now presides over a UN-blessed architecture in which a U.S.-designed Board of Peace and an ISF will shape post-war Gaza. The leverage is enormous: security, reconstruction funds, and international legitimacy flow through a mechanism the Trump administration dominates.

Now add Trump’s broader aims:

His second administration is pushing hard to expand the Abraham Accords, explicitly seeking to bring Saudi Arabia, and even Turkey-linked arrangements, into a wider front.
He has publicly expressed hope that Saudi Arabia will join “very soon”, and he has tied this to major defense deals, including potential F-35 sales and a U.S.–Saudi defense pact.
Turkey, along with Qatar and Egypt, has been a key player in the Trump-brokered Gaza ceasefire and hostage negotiations, and is positioning itself for a role in what comes next.

This creates a very specific risk for Israel:

When Israeli security concerns in Gaza conflict with Trump’s desire for a “historic” Saudi deal, an expanded Abraham bloc, and a regional photo-op including Turkey and other Muslim states, we now have a live case study of how he resolves such conflicts — Ukraine.

Where Israel’s red lines can clash with Trump’s grand bargain

Israel’s core post-Hamas concerns are straightforward:

Real, verifiable demilitarization of Hamas and other terror groups, with no cosmetic disarmament or rearmament loopholes.
No hostile foreign troops inside Gaza under a peacekeeping label — especially from states with close ties to Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood.
No imposed governance structure that ties Israel’s hands if terror reemerges or that smuggles in de facto Palestinian statehood on terms that ignore our security realities.

Trump’s incentives are not identical:

He needs visible progress on Palestinian political horizons to unlock Saudi normalization and keep a broad Arab and Islamic coalition backing his Gaza plan.
He wants Arab and Muslim-majority states willing to staff and legitimize the ISF and Board of Peace, which may require compromises Israel finds risky.
He is chasing a legacy-defining “new Middle East” built on money, weapons, and mega-projects as much as on security logic.

When — not if — those incentives collide with Israeli red lines, the Ukraine case tells us how this administration behaves: support becomes conditional on accepting a U.S.-devised package, enforced by a Trump-chaired body, with the implicit threat of being left to “fight your little heart out” if you say no.

Don’t outsource Israel’s survival to one politician

Trump is not a hypothetical; he is in the Oval Office now, and barring shock, will be there for years. That is our strategic reality. It makes one lesson painfully clear: confusing flattering words and symbolic moves with iron-clad guarantees is more dangerous today than ever.

Three consequences follow:

Guard what’s left of the bipartisan foundation, even in a Trump-dominated moment.
Israel’s real long-term asset has never been one man; it has been the broad American conviction — Republican and Democrat — that Israel’s security is a vital U.S. interest. Trump’s Ukraine plan is already dividing Washington, with critics in both parties warning it rewards aggression and weakens a key ally.
If Israel allows itself to be seen purely as “Trump’s client state,” we may discover in three years that the political ground under our feet has eroded badly for the post-Trump era.
Define and communicate our non-negotiables while the deals are still being written.
Kyiv is now facing a fully baked 28-point blueprint backed by a Trump-chaired Peace Council. Gaza already has a UN-endorsed ISF and Board of Peace framework. The pattern is clear: Trump likes to arrive with the document already in his pocket.
Israel’s political and security leadership needs to put down markers now — on Gaza demilitarization, foreign forces, borders, timelines, and statehood language — and communicate them firmly to Washington. If we don’t draw our lines before the next “grand package” is unveiled, we will be negotiating inside a cage built for us in advance.
Make sure Trump cannot single-handedly choke Israel’s diplomatic oxygen.
Today, the Trump administration controls weapons resupply, the U.S. veto at the UN, and much of the diplomatic bandwidth with key Arab partners. That makes him indispensable — but it must not make him omnipotent. Israel should use this period to deepen practical ties with Europe, moderate Arab states, India, and Asia, not to replace the U.S. alliance but to ensure that no single White House can credibly say “do it my way or you’re on your own” and expect Israel simply to fold.

A friend who can throw you under the bus

Trump’s Ukraine plan tells a simple, uncomfortable truth: he is prepared to throw a country he loudly promised to support under the bus the moment its survival clashes with his bigger deals, his timeline or his branding.

Israelis who believe that our “special relationship,” the embassy move, or the first round of Abraham Accords place us in a fundamentally different category from Ukraine are indulging in a dangerous fantasy. To a leader whose loyalty is to the deal, not the ally, Israel is not an exception — it is a future bargaining chip, especially when Saudi Arabia and Turkey are part of the puzzle.

Our security has always rested on three legs: a strong IDF, a resilient society, and a deep — and broad — partnership with the United States. Betting all of that on one man’s version of America First, while he chases mega-agreements with Riyadh and designs regional architectures over our heads, is like flying on one engine over hostile territory.

In Jewish tradition we say, “Im ein ani li, mi li?” — If I am not for myself, who will be? Trump’s Ukraine plan, and his Gaza framework with Saudi Arabia and others in mind, are stark reminders that this is not just spiritual wisdom; for Israel, it is a national security doctrine.

Treat Ukraine as a warning, not an exception.

Because if we ignore the lesson, we may wake up one day to discover that we are Ukraine in the story — praised in speeches, pressured in back rooms, and told that the only “peace” on offer is the one that fits neatly into someone else’s great-power script.