Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have gotten what he wanted from President Donald Trump after his recent visit to the United States.
After Monday’s meeting, President Trump praised Netanyahu as a “hero” and said Israel, and by extension the prime minister, “executed 100 percent of the plan” regarding the Gaza ceasefire signed by the US president.
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That comes despite reports last week that US officials were growing frustrated with Netanyahu’s apparent “slow progress” on the 20-point ceasefire plan imposed by the US administration in October, despite suspicions that the Israeli prime minister wants to leave the door open to resuming fighting against the Palestinian organization Hamas at a time of his choosing.
Under the terms of the agreement, after exchanging all prisoners, living and dead, held in Gaza, bringing aid into the enclave, and freezing all front lines, Gaza will move on to the second phase, which will include negotiating the creation of a technocratic “peace committee” to administer the enclave and the deployment of international security forces to protect it.
So far, Prime Minister Netanyahu has not granted all the necessary aid that Gaza desperately needs, and has also insisted that a second phase cannot begin until Hamas returns the bodies of its last remaining prisoners. It has also demanded that Hamas disarm before Israel withdraws its troops, a proposal that President Trump fully supported after Monday’s meeting.
Hamas has repeatedly rejected attempts by Israel to force it to disarm, and officials have said the weapons issue is an internal Palestinian matter that should be discussed among Palestinian factions.
So is Prime Minister Netanyahu deliberately trying to avoid entering the second phase of the deal, and why?
Here are four reasons why Prime Minister Netanyahu may be satisfied with the status quo.
he is under pressure from the right
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ruling coalition is by far the most right-wing party in the country’s history. Throughout the Gaza war, the support of Israeli hardliners proved essential in guiding the prime minister’s coalition through a period of intense domestic protests and international criticism.
Currently, many on the right, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, oppose the ceasefire, protest the release of Palestinian prisoners, and advocate the occupation of Gaza.
Netanyahu’s Defense Minister Yisrael Katz has also shown little enthusiasm for honoring the deal the country committed to in October. Speaking at a ceremony commemorating the latest expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Katz insisted that Israeli forces will remain in Gaza and eventually clear the way for further settlements.
Katz reportedly later retracted his statement under pressure from the United States.
He doesn’t want international troops in Gaza
Allowing international forces to deploy to Gaza would limit Israel’s operational freedom and limit its ability to re-enter Gaza, carry out targeted attacks, and pursue Hamas remnants within the enclave.
Despite the ceasefire, Israeli forces have so far killed more than 400 people in the enclave since agreeing to cease fighting on October 10.
Politically, agreeing to the deployment of an international stabilization force, especially from neighboring countries, would expand what Israel has often seen as a domestic war into an international conflict, in which many of the strategic, diplomatic, and political decisions regarding that conflict would be made by actors outside Israel’s control.
It could also be framed domestically as a concession forced by the United States and the international community, undermining Netanyahu’s repeated insistence on preserving Israel’s sovereignty and strategic independence.
“If Prime Minister Netanyahu allows foreign troops into Gaza, he will immediately be denied a significant amount of freedom of movement,” Israeli political analyst Nimrod Fraschenberg said from Berlin. “Ideally, you want to keep things as they are without alienating Mr. Trump.”
He wants to resist any progress toward a two-state solution.
Although it does not explicitly refer to a two-state solution, the ceasefire agreement includes a clause that commits Israelis and Palestinians to dialogue toward a “political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence.”
But Prime Minister Netanyahu has opposed a two-state solution since at least 2015, when he campaigned on the issue.
More recently, at the United Nations in September, he labeled the decision to recognize Palestinian statehood as “insane” and insisted that Israel had no intention of accepting the establishment of a Palestinian homeland.
Israeli ministers have also worked to ensure that a two-state solution remains a realistic impossibility. Israel’s plan to cut occupied East Jerusalem, long considered the future capital of a Palestinian state, from the West Bank and establish a series of new settlements would make the establishment of a viable state impossible.
This is not just an unfortunate result of geography. Smotrich, who announced plans for the new settlements in August, said the project would “kill the idea of a Palestinian state.”
Resuming the war will benefit him
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a number of threats at home, from his own corruption trial to the potentially explosive issue of forced military conscription on Israel’s ultra-religious students. He has also come under public condemnation for his own failings before and during the Hamas-led offensive on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, all coming in a crucial election year for the prime minister.
Each of these challenges risks fracturing his coalition and weakening his hold on power. But a new conflict with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, or even Iran could derail all of that, or at least obscure it politically.
If fighting resumes, he could reassert himself as a wartime leader, mute criticism and rally allies and adversaries alike under the well-worn flag of a “national emergency.”
