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FORGET TRUMP — AGREEING TO A CEASEFIRE WAS NETANYAHU’S OWN
CALCULATION  
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Meron Rapoport
January 17, 2025
972 Magazine [[link removed]]

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_ In Israel, the war in Gaza has become a burden on the government,
the military, and society as a whole. Trump only gave Netanyahu an
excuse to cut his losses. _

A large billboard in Jerusalem depicts U.S. President-elect Donald
Trump urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war,
January 13, 2025, photo: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90

 

Almost immediately after the announcement that Israel and Hamas had
agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza, a consensus emerged in
the international
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[[link removed]] Israeli
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pressure and threats from President-elect Donald Trump is what led
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to finally agree to a deal
that had been on the table since May 2024. The story about Steven
Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, who arrived in Jerusalem
on Saturday morning and informed Netanyahu that he had no intention of
waiting until the end of Shabbat to speak with him, is fast becoming
folklore. 

“There would be no deal had the great and mighty Donald Trump not
taken Netanyahu’s hand, bent it behind his back, then bent it a
little more, then a little more, then pushed his head onto the table,
then whispered in his ear that in a moment he will kick him in the
balls,” Haaretz journalist Chaim Levinson tweeted
[[link removed]] on
Wednesday, summarizing the general sentiment. “It’s a shame Biden
didn’t realize this a long time ago.”

We don’t know exactly what was said during the conversation between
Witkoff and Netanyahu. It is possible that Trump did threaten
Netanyahu and that the Israeli prime minister feared the
president-elect’s wrath. But a closer look reveals that there are
different dynamics at play. In reality, the decision to accept the
ceasefire deal appears to have less to do with Trump than with the
shifting perception of the war inside Israel.  

Let’s rewind: right after returning from his first visit to Israel
after the Hamas attack of October 7, President Biden warned
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not to reoccupy Gaza. He also said he was convinced that “Israel
will do everything in its power to avoid killing innocent
civilians,” and that he was confident Gaza’s population would have
access to medicine, food, and water. Biden additionally warned
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not to repeat the mistakes the United States made after 9/11 and not
to let the desire to “deliver justice” take over. Netanyahu
listened to all of this, then did the opposite.  

Throughout the war, Israel summarily ignored American warnings, even
when they were accompanied by explicit threats to halt weapons
shipments — such as before Israel invaded Rafah
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it starved northern Gaza
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recent months. And while it is possible that Trump scares Netanyahu
more than Biden, we must ask: if Netanyahu had refused to agree to the
deal now, would Trump have stopped arms shipments to Israel or lifted
the U.S. veto on anti-Israel resolutions at the UN? 

Trump’s pick for U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, supports
the territorial maximalism
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the Israeli far right and doesn’t believe in the word
“occupation.” Would Trump’s administration really do something
no American administration has ever done before? So, while Trump’s
pressure is undoubtedly significant, we should look at what is
happening within Israel. 

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. president
Donald Trump at the White House in Washington DC, March 5, 2018. (Haim
Zach/GPO)]
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. president
Donald Trump at the White House in Washington DC, March 5, 2018. (Haim
Zach/GPO)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. president
Donald Trump at the White House in Washington DC, March 5, 2018. (Haim
Zach/GPO)

As I predicted
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than two months ago, shortly before the ceasefire in Lebanon:
“Ending the war in the north will inevitably bring the Israeli
public’s attention back to the war in Gaza, and questions about the
viability of it continuing will resurface. Even if Trump gives the
green light to continue the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, it’s not
certain that this will be enough to convince the Israeli public.
Whether or not Israel intends it to, ending the war in Lebanon may
hasten the end of the war in Gaza.” That, in my reading, is exactly
what has transpired.  

Some will argue that the agreement was a product of shifts in Hamas’
thinking after it was left alone to face the Israeli war machine,
following Hezbollah’s decision to stop firing and the collapse of
the Assad regime in Syria. But if Hamas had ever believed (and it is
questionable whether it truly did) that the threat of an
intensification of Hezbollah’s attacks would prevent Israel from
doing whatever it wanted in Gaza, the invasion of Rafah likely proved
otherwise. Besides, the Assad regime was hostile to Hamas, and the new
regime in Syria might actually be more sympathetic — as the recent
visit to Damascus of Qatar’s prime minister suggests. 

There is no reason to doubt National Security Minister Itamar Ben
Gvir’s claim [[link removed]] that
the political pressure he exerted on Netanyahu repeatedly thwarted a
deal over the past year. The notion that the agreement was achieved
because Hamas abandoned all its demands due to Netanyahu’s
stubbornness is “a nice story, but it’s not true. In fact, it’s
the exact opposite of reality,” wrote
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journalist Ronen Bergman in Ynet, who has repeatedly demonstrated how
Netanyahu himself sabotaged the deal after the United States and Hamas
agreed to it eight months ago.  

It was almost embarrassing to watch U.S. National Security
Communications Advisor John Kirby on Israel’s Channel 12 explaining
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Hamas only folded and agreed to the ceasefire because Israel killed
its former leader Yahya Sinwar — just days after Secretary of State
Antony Blinken stated
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an interview with The New York Times that Sinwar’s assassination
actually made the negotiations significantly more difficult.
Washington would be better off deciding on one lie to tell, then
coordinating it among themselves.  

An increasingly unpopular war

Inside Israel, the war in Gaza has become a burden on the government,
the military, and society as a whole. In all the recent polls, a clear
majority — between 60
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or even higher — supports ending the war. Contrary to what might
have been expected, ending the war in Lebanon actually strengthened
the desire to end the war in Gaza.  

There are various reasons for this. The weekly demonstrations led by
the families of hostages may not match the scale of the protest that
erupted following the discovery of the bodies of six hostages
[[link removed]] murdered by
Hamas back in September, but the challenge they pose to the government
has not diminished. On the contrary, never before have so many
Israelis taken to the stage at such large protests and so bluntly
called for an end to a war while Israel is waging it. 

[Israelis protest calling for the release of hostages in Gaza outside
the Defense Ministry Headquarters in Tel Aviv, September 7, 2024.
(Erik Marmor/Flash90)]
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Israelis protest calling for the release of hostages in Gaza outside
the Defense Ministry Headquarters in Tel Aviv, September 7, 2024.
(Erik Marmor/Flash90)
Israelis protest calling for the release of hostages in Gaza outside
the Defense Ministry Headquarters in Tel Aviv, September 7, 2024.
(Erik Marmor/Flash90)

In a recent speech during one of these protests, as yet another
Israeli delegation set off for ceasefire negotiations in Qatar, Einav
Zangauker — a prominent activist whose son, Matan, is being held
captive in Gaza — predicted that the delegation would return with
Hamas’ demand to stop the war, and Netanyahu would claim that Hamas
had hardened its positions. “Don’t buy those lies,” she told the
crowd.  

The military is also showing signs of fatigue. Despite dedicating
significant efforts to the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza since
early October, Hamas remains far from defeated and is still inflicting
casualties on the Israeli army. Just last week, 15 soldiers were
killed in Beit Hanoun — an area the military first occupied at the
start of the ground invasion over 14 months ago. 

The mission to rescue the hostages, as soldiers have testified
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appears impossible. All that remains is the destruction of northern
Gaza for the sake of it. A reserve officer, who has served more than
200 days in Gaza, told me that the prevailing mood among soldiers is
that the war is going nowhere — not because of moral opposition (62
percent of Israelis agree with the statement “there are no innocents
in Gaza,” according to a recent survey
[[link removed]] by
the aChord Center), but because its goals are unclear.  

More importantly, it is likely that Netanyahu himself has begun to
reassess the notion that he has nothing to gain from ending the war
and only stands to lose. One might have assumed that his popularity
would have surged following what virtually the entire Israeli media
described as Israel’s sweeping victories in Lebanon, Syria, Iran,
and Gaza. In reality, the opposite occurred. Recent polls
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Netanyahu’s coalition dropping to 49 seats out of 120, close to its
standing immediately after October 7, while the center-left bloc could
form a majority even without the Knesset’s remaining Palestinian
parties.  

Altogether, it appears that the hostage families’ protests — which
gain fuel every time the military brings home another hostage in a
body bag — alongside the exhaustion and loss of motivation within
the military, the unpopularity of the war among the public, and
Netanyahu’s declining poll numbers, may have led the prime minister
to the conclusion that continuing the war indefinitely would leave his
chances of winning the next election — scheduled for a year and 10
months from now — as slim to nonexistent. 

As a result, Netanyahu may have decided that now is the time to cut
his losses. Even if Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
decide to bring down the government, Netanyahu has a fair chance of
succeeding in early elections by presenting the scalps of Sinwar and
Nasrallah in one hand and embracing the returning hostages with the
other.  

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Knesset in
Jerusalem, December 23, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)]
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Knesset in
Jerusalem, December 23, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Knesset in
Jerusalem, December 23, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The perfect excuse

If this is the case, Trump’s pressure — whether real or
exaggerated — serves as the perfect excuse for Netanyahu to explain
to his supporters why he climbed down from the tree of “total
victory.” If Channel 14, Netanyahu’s propaganda network, is
reporting on the “tough conversation” between Netanyahu and
Witkoff, one suspects that the source of the information is the Prime
Minister’s Office, not the Americans. Netanyahu has a clear interest
in amplifying this narrative: that way, he can claim he fought
valiantly against the “leftists” in the Biden administration but
was powerless against the unpredictable and easily angered Republican
from Mar-a-Lago.  

The proof that both the war and its cessation are internal Israeli
matters will likely come in 42 days, when the first stage of the deal
concludes and the second stage begins, which is supposed to include
Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza. After the agreement was signed
in Qatar, Trump said
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is proof that his administration will “seek peace and negotiate
deals” in the Middle East, suggesting that he expects this ceasefire
to bring an end to the war. The wording of the agreement — which
stipulates that negotiations toward the second phase will start on the
16th day of the first phase, and that as long as these negotiations
continue the ceasefire will remain in place — points in the same
direction. 

Yet Smotrich is conditioning
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decision to remain in the government on Israel resuming the war,
conquering Gaza in its entirety, and severely restricting humanitarian
aid after phase one of the deal has been completed. In Friday’s
cabinet meeting that approved the deal, Netanyahu said he received
assurances from Trump to resume the war if negotiations ahead of the
second stage fail. This apparently runs against Trump’s will, but
under pressure from the right, Netanayhu may well agree to a
resumption in fighting — meaning that American pressure, even under
the “great and mighty” Trump, has a limit.  

* Gaza
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* Israel
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Donald Trump
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