Trump calls the Gaza cease-fire the “historic dawn of a new Middle East.” But the stream of U.S. officials flying in to keep Benjamin Netanyahu in check suggests the old Middle East — and America’s old habits — are still very much alive.
There’s a new kind of diplomatic rotation happening in Israel this week. Vice President JD Vance flies out just as Secretary of State Marco Rubio touches down. Jared Kushner and real estate magnate–turned–special envoy Steve Witkoff were there a few days earlier. The constant parade of American dignitaries is less a show of unity than a symptom of anxiety — Washington’s fear that the Gaza cease-fire, the Trump administration’s self-declared crowning achievement, might unravel before the ink dries.
Israeli commentators have a name for this new American ritual: “Bibisitting.” The term — a play on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nickname — evokes the image of U.S. officials hovering over Israel’s famously headstrong leader to make sure he doesn’t break anything before bedtime.
It’s not far off the mark. The cease-fire, fragile and incomplete, has required what one former U.S. official called “constant high-level attention.” The Biden administration once faced criticism for “micromanaging” Israeli policy. The Trump team now finds itself doing something similar, only this time under the banner of loyalty.
At a press conference Wednesday, Vance bristled at the “Bibisitting” label. “We’re not here to monitor a toddler,” he said. Yet the symbolism was hard to ignore. While Vance stood beside Netanyahu in Jerusalem, the Israeli leader’s far-right allies were demanding the immediate resumption of war. When militants killed two Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir publicly called for “full-scale fighting.” Netanyahu, caught between Trump’s cease-fire and his own coalition’s fury, wavered.
When Israel briefly halted aid shipments to Gaza — a key element of the cease-fire deal — it reversed course hours later under U.S. pressure. That prompted domestic critics to accuse Netanyahu of outsourcing Israel’s decision-making to Washington. “One week they say Israel controls the United States. A week later they say the United States controls Israel,” Netanyahu quipped beside Vance. “This is hogwash.”
But even Netanyahu’s humor couldn’t hide the truth: American hands are now all over Israel’s Gaza policy. The U.S. is leading a new “international command center” in southern Israel to oversee postwar stabilization. It is setting the tempo of aid deliveries, the pace of troop withdrawals, and the tone of negotiations with Arab states. For all of Trump’s talk about putting “America first” and letting regional actors take responsibility, his administration is once again micromanaging a Middle East crisis it claims to have solved.
The irony runs deep. Trump has celebrated the cease-fire as the “historic dawn of a new Middle East.” Yet it looks more like a long, nervous night shift. If the new era truly began, why must American officials take turns babysitting it into existence?
“Bibisitting” is not just a punchline — it’s a metaphor for the enduring imbalance in U.S.–Israeli relations. Washington cannot seem to let go, and Jerusalem cannot seem to act without it. This dynamic may preserve the cease-fire in the short term, but it also exposes the fragility of Trump’s supposed achievement. A peace that depends on constant American supervision is not peace — it’s a truce under probation.
And so, the planes keep coming and going. Vance out, Rubio in. Kushner back soon, perhaps with another “innovation” for Gaza’s reconstruction. Each arrival signals not stability, but uncertainty — the need to keep a volatile partner from tipping the table. The “new Middle East” may be dawning, but the shadows of the old one are unmistakable: mistrust, dependency, and the illusion that one more visit, one more handshake, will make the region behave.
If this is what victory looks like, then America’s foreign policy has become a perpetual babysitting gig — one where the child never quite grows up, and the sitter can never go home.