The question is not if, but when US-Israel relations will reset.

The writing is already on the wall as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu prepares for an end-of-the-year visit to Washington, his fifth since US President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office in January.

The reset is unlikely to be sudden or in one big bang. Instead, it will probably be gradual but consequential.

Already, Mr. Trump has made clear that his forthcoming talks with Mr. Netanyahu will focus on curbing Israeli military operations in Syria, achieving agreement on security arrangements that will include an Israeli withdrawal from Syrian territory occupied by Israel since last year’s toppling of President Bashar al-Assad, and constructive Israeli engagement in the implementation of the president’s Gaza ceasefire plan.

At the top of the president’s agenda is likely to be ensuring that Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t thwart Mr. Trump’s efforts to create an international stabilisation force that would support a non-partisan Palestinian administration of post-war Gaza, supervised by a Board of Peace that he would chair.

US Ambassador to the United Nations and Mr. Trump’s former national security advisor, Mike Waltz, is scheduled to visit Israel this week to discuss post-war arrangements in Gaza as well as Israel’s continued restriction on the flow of humanitarian aid into the Strip in violation of the ceasefire.

Most potential Arab and Muslim contributors to the stabilisation force insist that they be invited by the West Bank-based, internationally recognised Palestine Authority, and that Israel fully withdraw from Gaza.

Mr. Netanyahu has ruled out a role for the Authority because it would put Palestinian national aspirations at the core of post-war Gaza arrangements.

Speaking at the Doha Forum, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani warned that implementation of the second phase of Mr. Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan had reached a “critical moment.”

With Israel attacking targets in Gaza daily despite the ceasefire, Mr. Al-Thani warned that “a ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of Israeli forces, there is stability back in Gaza, people can go in and out, which is not the case today.”

   

Also addressing the Doha Forum, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty became the first senior Arab official to suggest that the stabilisation force should be deployed to police the ‘yellow line’ that separates Israeli and Hamas-controlled areas of Gaza, even if there is no clear timetable for the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Many potential contributors to the force, as well as Palestinians, fear that the absence of a timetable would institutionalise the division of Gaza into Israeli and Hamas-controlled areas and turn the force into a de facto enforcer of Israeli territorial designs.

“We need to deploy this force as soon as possible on the ground because one party, which is Israel, is violating the ceasefire every day,” Mr. Abdelatty said.

Mr. Abdelatty appeared to assume that deployment of the force would ensure that Mr. Trump obligate Israel to halt its daily strikes.

Mr. Abdelatty’s assumption is not without merit and could be a building block in a possible reset in US-Israeli relations that is about much more than Gaza.

The reset would be about a fundamental adjustment of Israel’s place in US Middle East policy as the basis for Israel’s unrivalled exceptional position in US politics, and the United States’ unconditional support erodes.

Israel’s Gaza war conduct may have facilitated and accelerated the process but Make America Great Again ideology, generational shifts in Mr. Trump’s Evangelical support base, the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism, the administration’s de facto positioning of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states as equally important Middle East allies, and negotiations on the future of US-Israeli military relations, are the main drivers of a potential reset.

In addition, Mr. Trump will likely be attentive to broader American public opinion in advance of mid-term Congressional elections a year from now, which, like in his support base, has become increasingly critical of Israel.

The reset would involve the Trump administration drawing sharper dividing lines between perceived US and Israeli interests, increased Congressional scrutiny of Israel, a repositioning of Israel’s status as first among equals in US policy, and a phased restructuring of the US-Israeli military relationship as proposed by the administration’s brain trust, the far-right, Washington-based Heritage Foundation.

Rather than putting the horse in front of the cart, Mr. Netanyahu, backed by pro-Israel administration officials, has so far opted for a rearguard battle to counter slippage in support for Israel among Evangelicals by pouring tens of millions of dollars into public relations campaigns.

Speaking to the first tranche of 1,000 pro-Israel American pastors invited by the Netanyahu government for a training in propagating the Israeli narrative and combatting anti-Semitism, Mike Huckabee, the Trump administration’s Christian Zionist ambassador to the Jewish-majority state, joined Israeli officials in countering growing anti-Israel sentiment in the president’s support base.

“There is a growing cancer within the Evangelical movement in America where people are thinking, Israel doesn’t matter, and there’s nothing biblical about our relationship to Israel. This is very dangerous,” Mr. Huckabee told the pastors.

“Nobody is asking you to go back to America and tell some story made up about Israel… (You are) simply being asked to go back and tell the truth. And tell it from the scriptures… If you tell it from the holy word of the holy God, you will be telling the truth, and the scripture may very visibly (and) say that this is the land that God gave to the Jewish people,” Mr. Huckabee added.

Proponents of a reset argue that it will serve both US and Israeli interests.

Normalising relations “would produce better outcomes than an exceptional one that too often incentivizes dangerous Israeli behaviour and depletes Washington’s global influence… Changing course before it is too late is in the best interests of all—Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians,” said former Obama administration National Security Council Director for Egypt and Israel Military Issues Andrew P. Miller.

To be sure, it would be premature to assume that Mr. Trump is determined to reset the US-Israeli relationship fundamentally, and even if he is, that the president is on the verge of doing so.

“There is a high risk that upcoming, trickier steps necessary to end the (Gaza) war will not be taken if Trump loses interest and, as is the American pattern, reverts to enabling Netanyahu,’ Mr. Miller said.

   

“If the assumption is correct that the (US-Israeli) relationship in its current form is unsustainable, the most responsible thing to do is to carefully and deliberately navigate this transition,” Mr. Miller added.

Mr. Miller suggested this could be achieved by:

n Delineating what are shared and divergent US and Israeli goals, what each country is prepared to do to support the other’s interests, and which actions would jeopardize this support.

n Applying US. and international laws, regulations, and standards to Israel as they are opportunistically upheld for other countries.

n Establishing conditionality in US assistance and policy towards Israel.

n Insisting that Israel and the United States refrain from intervening in each other’s electoral and partisan politics.

Applying US and international laws and non-interference in each other’s politics is a tall order for Mr. Trump, who has disdain for the law and no compunctions about interfering in other countries’ politics as he recently did by calling for a pardon for Mr. Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption-related offenses and breach of trust.

Even so, delineating interests and introducing conditionality that Mr. Trump could embrace, would be a good start.

However, that would require Mr. Trump to adopt a less transactional approach and a more long-term view of US-Israeli relations, moves that would be out of character.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Contributing Editor to WhoWhatWhy, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.