While telling The Washington Post on Tuesday that falling oil prices could be a reason for a possible US military withdrawal from the Middle East, Trump still added that ‘one reason to stay is Israel’.
During a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July, Trump said that ‘we’ve worked with Israel long and hard for many years’, and that the United States has never been closer to the Jewish State than it is now.
‘President Putin also is helping Israel, and we both spoke with “Bibi” Netanyahu and they would like to do certain things with respect to Syria, having to do with the safety of Israel’, Trump said, apparently meaning that the US and Russia are both working with Israel and ‘Israel [is] working with us’.
‘I think [Russia’s] working with Israel is a great thing – and creating safety for Israel is something both President Putin and I would like to see very much’, Trump noted.
Relations between the US and Israel have been on the upswing since Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
In May 2018, the United States moved its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, despite protests from the international community. Tel Aviv, on the contrary, praised the move.
READ MORE: US to Reject UN Resolution Calling on Israel to Return Golan Heights to Syria
The White House's controversial decision intensified a wave of Palestinian mass protests on the Gaza border, leading to numerous casualties.