Donald Trump has built much of his political identity around a simple proposition: It was that the American president was too cautious about using American power. He argues that allies, adversaries, and bureaucrats have learned to ignore Washington because Washington has forgotten how to subjugate its people. His Gaza vision was supposed to show the opposite. Mr. Trump will impose a framework, the parties will accept it, and the United States will ultimately act as the essential power it asserts itself to be.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s immediate rejection of that framework was not just a negotiating tactic. This amounted to a pre-emptive veto, and was intended to weaken the initiative before it could gain momentum. It is tempting to paint this conflict as a routine disagreement between the Israeli prime minister and the US president, but that misses the larger significance. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion that there can be no Israeli withdrawal until Hamas is “truly” disarmed goes directly to the heart of President Trump’s proposal and raises questions that Washington has avoided for decades. What happens when a superpower allows its allies to dictate its diplomatic terms?
President Trump’s 15-point framework is based on reciprocal steps. Hamas will hand over weapons within the interim agreement. International stabilization mechanisms and Palestinian security structures will begin to take shape. And Israeli forces will gradually withdraw as the new order begins to function.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has effectively rewritten that equation. He argues that Israel cannot meaningfully withdraw until Hamas is completely disarmed. On the surface, this seems like an uncompromising security requirement. In practice, this creates a situation where it can be postponed indefinitely. Who decides what constitutes complete disarmament? Who verifies it? What if Israel claims that weapons are still hidden or that new threats have emerged? If the answer to each question lies with the Israeli government, then withdrawal will depend on criteria that only Israel can define and modify.
A condition that cannot be independently measured and verified is not a security requirement. It’s a political escape. In Netanyahu’s hands, disarmament would no longer be part of the negotiation process, but a permanent veto of the process itself.
The deeper question is therefore not whether Hamas should lay down its arms. Any credible postwar proposal presupposes that it cannot remain an independent military authority. The real conflict is who controls the sequence and therefore the transitions.
President Trump’s framework calls for Israel to surrender some control to international and Palestinian transition structures. Netanyahu’s position gives Israel control over when military powers end. If only Israel decides when the threat disappears, then only Israel decides when the transition can begin. The result will be an unlimited Israeli security presence wrapped in the language of disarmament.
The conflict between the two men has become even more acute due to their political differences. President Trump needs to end the war in Gaza. He wants to brand as his own diplomatic accomplishments that prove American power can succeed where traditional diplomacy has failed. Prime Minister Netanyahu faces a fundamentally different calculation. For him, war is inseparable from Israel’s definition of victory. Any deal that ends the fighting while leaving Hamas with residual capabilities or cedes key powers to Palestinians or international actors could be seen by right-wing allies as an abandonment of the war’s central objectives.
Trump defines success in transactional terms. Prime Minister Netanyahu defines it in maximalist terms. Although the two are allies, they do not share the same objectives, leading to a conflict between the president, who demands results, and the prime minister, whose political survival depends on preventing them.
This is where Israel’s domestic politics and US strategic interests collide. Prime Minister Netanyahu rules with the support of forces hostile to any deal that strengthens Palestinian institutions. A defensible compromise in Washington is politically dangerous for Netanyahu. And Netanyahu understands what successive Israeli governments have learned: If Israel pushes back hard enough, U.S. red lines often become negotiable. The familiar strategy is simple. Stall, protest, invoke security, mobilize political pressure, and wait for the President of the United States to back down.
This record is hard to ignore. The U.S. government provides Israel with extraordinary military, diplomatic, and economic support. However, successive governments have repeatedly appealed, issued warnings, and filed private complaints, only to provide accommodations for the Israeli government when the political costs of conflict have increased. The result is pathology. The United States funds allies who routinely defy U.S. policy while treating private appeals as a substitute for meaningful pressure. Prime Minister Netanyahu expects this pattern to continue.
Trump has promised to break this kind of political inertia. His brand is based on the idea that America’s power is only meaningful because he is willing to exploit it. But Gaza exposes the gap between rhetorical strength and actual influence. Confronting the enemy is another thing. Confronting Israel is another matter. Doing so will require challenging not only Prime Minister Netanyahu but also the domestic political base that has historically made sustained pressure on the Israeli government extremely difficult.
The administration’s failure to match words with results suggests to Netanyahu that there are no real costs to defying Washington’s stated goals. America’s passivity is not neutral. It is an invitation to continued fortitude.
Mr. Trump now has a choice to make. While Netanyahu defines Washington’s limits, he can modify the framework until he accepts it, while maintaining some semblance of diplomatic progress. The project still bears his name, but its central mechanism will be removed.
Alternatives are more important. If President Trump insists on a disengagement mechanism at the heart of his proposal, his administration will finally have to face the question it has so far avoided: What is Washington prepared to do if Israel rejects it?
To get a serious answer, the United States will need to leverage the influence it already has. That means attaching conditions to military aid, delaying arms transfers, or making clear that aid cannot be provided automatically if Israeli policy directly interferes with declared U.S. goals. Without a willingness to bear the political costs, the words of U.S. leaders become little more than a play.
This is important because the well-known argument that “Israel has the right to defend itself” says little about what will happen to Gaza after the war. The destruction of Hamas is a military goal. Building a political order that can prevent new wars requires legitimacy, governance, and credible Palestinian interests. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s approach does not provide a convincing answer. If Gaza remains under indefinite Israeli military control while Palestinian institutions are weakened or eliminated, the conditions that gave rise to armed resistance will not disappear. they will evolve.
This is why the controversy surrounding sequencing is such a significant issue. The US government insists the war must end through a transition to a new security and governance system. Prime Minister Netanyahu said the transition could not begin until Israel was satisfied that the threat had been removed. With this formulation, Israel itself will decide when the transition can begin. It’s not a true transition. It is a strategy of permanent postponement, one that its proponents claim they have not rejected but which could undermine the diplomatic process.
Trump’s political brand is based on the proposition that presidential power is meaningful when it produces results. Gaza will test that proposition in the one relationship in which U.S. presidents have historically been most reluctant to demonstrate it.
The question is no longer whether President Trump can extract concessions from Hamas. A more difficult question is whether he is willing to tell the Israeli prime minister that U.S. policy cannot be vetoed by a foreign government, even with a very important ally.
Failing that, the lesson will be that Israeli leaders can block U.S. diplomacy with little fear of serious consequences, and that a president who has promised to restore U.S. power may find that its greatest constraint is not a lack of influence but a lack of political will to use it. Power without the will to exercise it is just a performance. In Gaza, that performance is increasingly being exposed.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
