For many years, under Israeli leaders from both left and right and American presidents from both the Democratic and Republican parties, Israelis were told they could not have their cake and eat it too: They could not keep millions of people under military occupation and still retain the decades-old special relationship with the United States. Israelis were convinced that the price of American support was concessions to the Arab side. But ever since President Barack Obama turned out to be a toothless orator, and even more so since Donald Trump took office, Israelis are realizing that they can have their cake and eat it too. They are not even required to throw the Arabs a few crumbs.

Fear of President Jimmy Carter’s long arm was a decisive factor in the decision by Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s government to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula as part of the 1979 Israeli peace treaty with Egypt. The refusal by President George H.W. Bush to accept Israeli settlement policy and his willingness to impose economic sanctions on Israel paved the way for the Likud Party’s defeat in the 1992 elections and the following year’s historic signing by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the Oslo Accord with the Palestinians. It was only under heavy pressure by President Bill Clinton that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the 1997 Hebron protocol on troop redeployments in the West Bank with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw all Israeli troops and settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005 stemmed from his desire to avoid clashing with President George W. Bush over his 2003 road map for a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu would not have uttered the words “we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state” in his landmark June 2009 Bar-Ilan speech had he not feared President Obama, who had pledged in Cairo just a few days earlier to push ahead with the establishment of such a state.

Trump, on the other hand, moved the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in May 2018 without Israeli recompense. The opposite is true. The president repeatedly ignores new housing construction for Jews in the West Bank and the razing of Palestinian homes there, even blaming the Palestinians for undermining peace prospects.

The most recent Peace Index indicates that most Jewish Israelis buy into the approach that blames the other side. Some 58% of those polled in the last week of June believe the Palestinians refuse to meet with Trump’s envoys because they are not interested in reaching a peace agreement with Israel. The finger of blame is not only being pointed from the right wing of the political arena — some 51% of Israelis who define themselves as centrists prefer the explanation that the Palestinian refusal stems from their lack of interest in peace. They, too, reject the Palestinian explanation that Trump’s pro-Israel bias makes him unfit to serve as an honest broker. Paradoxically, most Jewish Israelis agree that Trump’s approach to the conflict is not balanced. No more than 30% of the Jews surveyed believe that Trump cares about Palestinian interests to some extent. On the other hand, 74% estimate that Israel’s interests are important or very important to him.