Britain, France, Canada, Australia recognized Palestine at UN in a major diplomatic shift on Sunday
\n new york
\nGrowing international frustration with Washington over the war in Gaza spilled into the open at the UN General assembly this week, with US allies recognizing a Palestinian state in a major test for President Donald Trump\u2019s Middle East policy.
\nAfter promising at the start of his second term to quickly end the war between Israel and Hamas, Trump now looks increasingly like a bystander as Israeli forces escalate their onslaught in the Palestinian enclave and he remains reluctant to rein in Washington\u2019s closest regional ally.
\nIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blindsided Trump with a strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar earlier this month that all but doomed the Trump administration\u2019s latest effort to secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal.
\nIsrael since then has launched a ground assault in Gaza City that the US accepted without objection, amid global condemnation of a widening humanitarian crisis in the coastal strip.
\nAnd defying Trump\u2019s warnings against what he called a gift to Hamas, a group of US allies, including Britain, France, Canada and Australia, announced just before and during the UN gathering their recognition of the state of Palestine in a dramatic diplomatic shift.
\n\u201cTrump has not been able to achieve any major progress or gains in the region, particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian top front,\u201d said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think-tank in Washington. \u201cIn fact, things are worse than when he entered office.\u201d
\nWith an end to the nearly two-year-old conflict seeming more remote than ever, the apparent sidelining of Trump has added to skepticism over his repeated claims since his return to office in January that he is a masterful peacemaker who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
\nFrench President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that if Trump really wants to win the coveted Nobel, he needs to stop the war in Gaza.
\n\u201cThere is one person who can do something about it, and that is the US president. And the reason he can do more than us, is because we do not supply weapons that allow the war in Gaza to be waged,\u201d Macron told France\u2019s BFM TV from New York.
\nSome analysts see Trump\u2019s unwillingness to apply Washington\u2019s leverage with Netanyahu as a realization that the conflict\u2013like Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine\u2013is much more complex and intractable than he has acknowledged.
\nOthers see it as tacit acceptance that Netanyahu will act in what he considers his own and Israel\u2019s interests and that there is little the US president can do to change that.
\nStill others speculate that Trump may have been distracted from the Middle East by domestic issues such as the recent murder of conservative activist ally Charlie Kirk, continuing fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the president\u2019s deployment of National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities for what he says are crime-fighting missions.
\nThe White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
\nTrump won\u2019t be swayed
\nDespite appearing less engaged on Gaza recently, Trump met on the UN sidelines on Tuesday with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan.
\nHe was expected to lay out US proposals for post-war governance in Gaza, without Hamas involvement, and push for Arab and Muslim countries to agree to contribute military forces to help provide security, Axios reported.
\nAlthough Trump has at times expressed impatience with Netanyahu\u2019s handling of the war, he made clear in his UN speech on Tuesday that he is not ready to back away from strong support for Israel, or be swayed by other countries\u2019 endorsement of Palestinian statehood.
\nSuch announcements only serve to \u2018\u2019encourage continued conflict\u2019\u2019 by giving Hamas a \u201creward for these horrible atrocities,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Britain, France, Canada, Australia recognized Palestine at UN in a major diplomatic shift on Sunday new york Growing international frustration with Washington over the war in Gaza spilled into the open at the UN General assembly this week, with US allies recognizing a Palestinian state in a major test for President Donald Trump\u2019s Middle East […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-504850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n