As several signs point to cooled relations between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, Washington observers are rushing to declare a full crisis in American-Israeli ties. 

Axios is reporting that Vice President Vance canceled a planned trip to Israel on Tuesday out of concern that he would appear to support Jerusalem’s widened Gaza operation. Separately, the Washington Post claims that unless the Gaza war ends, President Trump will “abandon” Israel — though the report was filed from Tel Aviv, and none of the article’s writers are based in America.  

“I think it’s way too early to call it a crisis, but there’s cause for concern,” a vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer, tells the Sun. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of coordination” between Washington and Jerusalem. With Mr. Trump’s unpredictability, he adds, some “are looking to stoke a crisis.”

Both the Washington Post and Axios based their Monday reporting on unidentified sources. Mr. Vance pushed back against the notion that Israel’s Gaza operation was the cause for forgoing a planned trip. “I think it is a lot of overstatement there,” the vice president told reporters Monday on Air Force Two before departing Rome.

Mr. Vance pointed to logistics, “like how do we provide security, how do we make sure that we get all the assets that we need in order to do the right official delegation. I’m sure we’ll visit Israel. Sometime in the future, but not today.”

Axios reported that while preparations were made in Israel for the vice president’s visit, Mr. Vance “decided against it due to the expansion of Israel’s military operation in Gaza.” Israel expanded a Gaza ground operation over the weekend. 

An Israeli negotiations team nevertheless remains at Doha, where America continues to lead efforts to secure the release of at least 10 hostages in return for a Gaza cease-fire.

Meanwhile an Israel Defense Force special operation unit killed a top terrorist involved in the hostage-holding Monday. According to one report, the unit was aiming to capture the man alive to interrogate him regarding the location of several of the hostages being held in the area. While that goal was not reached, the man was killed in a house at Gaza’s second largest city, Khan Yunis.  

While Israel intensified its Gaza operation, it also allowed, for the first time in more than two months, a limited delivery of humanitarian aid into the Strip. Flour for bread-baking and hot meals were to be distributed by American operators at an IDF-protected camp for civilians evacuated from battle zones.

Mr. Netanyahu said Monday that the IDF is in the process of taking over the entire Gaza Strip. Yet, he said, some of Israel’s biggest supporters in Congress have told him that while they could justify the assault on Hamas, they won’t stand for any reports of malnutrition. “We can’t reach a point of starvation” in Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu said. 

Israel had halted all deliveries to Gaza after it concluded that Hamas was confiscating humanitarian aid and using it to re-establish its control over Gaza. 

Nine trucks entered Gaza Monday, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator, Tom Fletcher, said, adding that distribution would be handled “through existing, proven mechanisms.” Israel has long contended that the UN aid distribution scheme has made it easier for Hamas to control the aid. Relations between Jerusalem and the world body have deteriorated significantly. 

“Let’s stick to the facts,” Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, wrote on X in response to Mr. Fletcher. Rather than a UN “mechanism” for aid distribution, Mr. Danon writes, Israel’s “authorization was granted specifically to NGOs that don’t allow Hamas to infiltrate their ranks — or loot aid destined for Gazans.”

Publicly, senior Trump administration officials express support for Israel. “We don’t want people obviously suffering as they have, and we blame Hamas for that, but nonetheless, they’re suffering,” Secretary Rubio told CBS on Sunday. “We are actively engaged in trying to figure out how to get more hostages out through some cease-fire type mechanisms.”

Yet, President Trump decided to forgo a stop in Israel last week. He launched talks with Iran and ended sanctions against Syria and strikes against the Houthis. These decisions seemed to have been made with no coordination with Jerusalem. At the same time, Mr. Trump reversed President Biden’s policy of limiting arms to deter Israeli military operations, and is pointedly refraining from publicly criticizing its Gaza military policies even while press outlets speculate that Mr. Trump is cooling on Mr. Netanyahu.

A person “familiar with the discussions” between the two capitals said that “Trump’s people are letting Israel know, ‘We will abandon you if you do not end this war,’” the Washington Post reported Monday. Widely amplified by Israeli press outlets, that bombshell sentence, though, was placed in the last paragraph of an article. It was signed by four reporters, two of whom are Tel Aviv-based; the others are at Beirut and Cairo.