Tag: israel-hamas war

During a White House visit from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, President Trump unveiled his administration’s plan to end the war in Gaza almost two years after it began with Hamas’ horrific invasion. The complex 20-point proposal is heavily weighted toward Israel. Among other things, it calls for the quick release of remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas — roughly 20 of whom are thought to be alive — and for the group to lay down its weapons and cede power to a transitional government, which would eventually be supplanted by the West Bank–governing Palestinian Authority. The deal also specifies that Gaza residents would not have to leave the territory (unlike in a previous far-fetched Trump plan) and includes a passage asserting Palestinians’ ultimate desire for statehood. On Friday, in the face of threats from Trump, Hamas agreed to the deal’s basic outlines, including release of hostages, but specified that it wanted to negotiate further on the details. It was an unsurprisingly tentative “yes” from the shifty group, which nonetheless signals a chance of imminent peace — with many caveats attached. In any case, Hamas’ answer quickly received Trump’s stamp of approval.

Israel has faced increasing international isolation in recent months as Netanyahu continues prosecuting a devastating assault on Gaza that has reduced much of the territory to rubble and killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, per the Gaza Health Ministry. The United Nations and multiple governments have accused Netanyahu of genocide, and the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest. Several European countries were initially supportive of Israel’s war but have gradually distanced themselves from Israel since. France, the U.K., and others recognized a Palestinian state over the past few weeks. Though Trump’s Gaza plan is favorable to Netanyahu, those countries have enthusiastically embraced the deal, as have nominal Palestinian allies in the Middle East including Egypt, Gaza’s other neighbor. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is less concerned about international reaction than a long-threatened revolt from two right-wing ministers who favor annexation of Gaza and could sink his fragile government.

Before Hamas issued its response to Trump’s plan, I spoke about the possibility of a cease-fire with Michael Koplow, the chief policy officer of Israeli Policy Forum, a group that has long advocated for a two-state solution. We discussed why Netanyahu may finally be ready to end the war, the concessions both sides are making, and how a fragile peace deal could survive.

You’ve outlined how risky this peace deal could be for Benjamin Netanyahu in terms of domestic politics. Why is he doing it, given those risks?
I think there are a couple of reasons. First and foremost, he doesn’t want to say “no” to President Trump, who is probably the only person Prime Minister Netanyahu is scared of politically. He does not want to be on the receiving end of a Trump blast on Truth Social or criticism along the lines that Trump has levied against other world leaders, like Volodymyr Zelenskyy. So when Trump asks him to say “yes” to something, he’s almost certainly going to say “yes.” Second, I think Netanyahu is probably looking at this as somewhat of a low-risk proposition, because he is almost certainly expecting Hamas to say “no,” or if not to say outright “no” to say “yes” with so many qualifications or reservations that it functionally becomes a “no.” Then he doesn’t suffer politically at all because he will keep his coalition, he has said “yes” to Trump, and he gets to move forward.

Even in a scenario where Hamas says “yes,” and the deal begins to move forward, there’s still an argument for Netanyahu to do this politically because he has to face an election no later than a year from now. His party and his coalition have been underwater since well before the October 7 attacks two years ago, so the only chance he has of remaining prime minister is going to an election where he can run on something and siphoning off enough seats — and it’s probably only two or three seats — to force a deadlock with the opposition. If he agreed to a deal that gets the hostages back, that requires full Hamas disarmament, that allows the IDF to stay in Gaza more or less indefinitely, and that determines the standards and timetable for its own withdrawal — he’s banking that that will be enough to move some of the voters who deserted him back into his camp. And then he can force at least a deadlock in the next election and he remains prime minister. So I think his calculus here on all those fronts is to say “yes,” and whatever happens next, he still may be in decent shape.

Is Netanyahu fearful of crossing Trump because it would make him less popular in Israel? Or is it more a policy thing where Trump could actually withhold arms and money that Israel wants, even if it’s hard to imagine him doing that?

I think it’s both. He has seen the way Trump has treated other world leaders. Zelenskyy of course is one, and Modi is another — someone who had a famously excellent relationship with Trump that seemed to dissipate for no conceivable reason. So I think he looks around at other leaders’ experiences, and he certainly does not want to put Israel on a back foot with Trump. I think this has been compounded over the last year, when Israel has become even more isolated. At this point, in many ways, the U.S. is the last country standing with Israel in  a full and complete way. So Netanyahu is even more dependent on the U.S. than he was before and even more dependent on this president, who’s particularly volatile. And the trends in Congress are not great for Israel in both parties.

There’s also a political angle, which is that, as Trump himself liked to note, he’s very popular in Israel, far more popular than Netanyahu. And the last thing Netanyahu needs, especially as he’s out there arguing that he’s going to prevent a Palestinian state and that he’ll do that in tandem with his good friend President Trump, is Trump pulling the rug out from underneath him.

This idea that there will be no Palestinian State under his watch, that he’s the one guy who would prevent that from happening — this has been integral to his political persona for decades now.
Correct. And we actually saw him make that argument on Tuesday, after he had said publicly “yes” to the deal. He recorded a video in Hebrew that he posted on social media where he claimed that there was absolutely nothing in the 20-point plan about a Palestinian state and that it’s not going to happen. Now, the plan does talk about Palestinian self-determination and statehood. It doesn’t use the phrase “Palestinian state.” He was clearly stretching the facts there a bit. But this is the thing that he has to run on, especially if the deal doesn’t actually go through and the hostages don’t come back. He doesn’t really have anything left. He can’t run on security, he can’t run on the economy, he can’t run on expanding the Abraham Accords and regional normalization. Many of the things he’s done are very unpopular with Israelis.

I thought he had rebounded a little bit in public opinion after the successful Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and Iran — that he was playing up the “regional protector” role. Has that faded?
The pager and beeper attacks in September 2024 on Hezbollah gave him a very temporary bump of maybe a seat or two, but that disappeared. And the strikes on Iran actually gave him nothing. What you see is that his party, Likud, will in some polls pick up a seat or two, but the coalition itself is even more underwater now than it was a year ago.

There’s been this ever-present threat from his right, with two ministers, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, always on the brink of pulling their support because he’s not severe enough on Palestinians. Is that a legitimate threat to him now, or would they bide their time and see what happens with a deal? 
So far, they’re waiting to see what happens. Smotrich issued a statement on Tuesday blasting the deal, but notably did not, in that statement, threaten to pull out of the government. Ben-Gvir has been uncharacteristically silent. He hasn’t said anything about it, so I think that the two of them, like Netanyahu, are probably betting that Hamas is going to say “no.” And if Hamas says “no,” and this doesn’t move forward, there’s no reason for them to leave the government. They can blast the idea of the deal itself, but they’ll still be getting the policies they want. So they’re going to wait and see what Hamas does, and they’re making what’s probably a pretty decent bet on Hamas’s continued intransigence.

There’s this vague allusion to Palestinian statehood in the proposed deal. Is that there to mollify other countries in the region that eventually signed on to this? Was that a sticking point for them?
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any scenario in which they would’ve signed onto this without some language about future Palestinian statehood and some language about a peace process, both of which are in there. And if you saw the joint statement by eight foreign ministers after the press conference last week — they emphasized two states and the political horizon for Palestinians more than anything else in the 20-point plan. So it’s clearly something that they want to see and need for their domestic politics. What’s going on in Gaza has created a lot of difficulties for them, but in some ways, what creates an even bigger problem is this idea that the war will end and there will be nothing for Palestinians at the end of the process. So they absolutely need this.

It’s interesting when you compare the 21-point plan that was given to reporters before last weekend and then the actual 20-point plan that was released. There are a bunch of changes that were made, reportedly at the Israeli government’s behest. But the one thing that didn’t really change was the last two clauses on Palestinian self-determination and statehood and a peace process. So that’s clearly something the Trump administration heard from Arab states that had to stay in there.

That brings us to Hamas. They’re not getting much out of this deal, and they’re surrendering their arms, which is something they said they would never do. But perhaps they could spin this by positioning the deal as a possible pathway to freedom and statehood, thus justifying their attack in some sense. Or am I making stuff up here?
I don’t know how much they actually care about a path to statehood, but I do think that they have an argument here, which is that for about a year and a half, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government have been talking about total victory over Hamas. And this plan is not total victory over Hamas. It calls for IDF withdrawal from Gaza, which is the No. 1 thing that Hamas has been calling for. It allows Hamas members to have amnesty if they decommission their weapons and if they commit to peaceful coexistence.

You wrote that a positive response from Hamas would still mean that “implementation of this proposal is still far from assured” — which would be fitting for this conflict in which nothing is ever simple or easy. So what might happen next in that case? 
If Hamas is a conditional “yes,” it lays the groundwork for the first steps of this deal to be carried out, which are the release of the hostages and then the first phase of IDF withdrawal to the second line on the map that accompanies the plan. If that happens, you at least have some progress on both sides. But I think after that, things are going to get very sticky. Even before that point, Hamas will play games with the release of hostages, which we saw in the previous two cease-fires as well. There’s no way that they are going to abide by the 72-hour deadline. They’re already making noise about needing more time because they don’t know where all the hostages are. And that’s going to lead to the IDF not wanting to withdraw to the line on the timetable the deal lays out.

Even in the most optimistic scenario, I don’t think this deal is going to go through exactly as it is detailed and on the timeline laid out. But what you need for even some measure of success is the hostage release, the end of the end-of-act fighting, and some measure of IDF withdrawal. And if that happens, then I think you probably get pretty intensive pressure from the U.S. and from Arab states to keep things going. So even if it looks very messy and sticky for months, if not years, getting past that first hurdle is a big deal.

You have long advocated for a two-state solution yourself. Obviously it isn’t happening anytime soon, but at least there’s some lip service to it here. If this deal does go through, even if partially, how would you feel about the outlook compared to before?
It’s important. I think a lot of what we’re seeing in terms of Israel’s isolation — part of it, of course, is the war in Gaza and Israeli conduct — but I think a fair amount of it is over this idea of the near closing-off of a political horizon for Palestinians. When you see what the Brits and the French and the Canadians were talking about when they were pushing Palestinian-statehood recognition at the U.N. last week, you see them clearly frustrated and trying to figure out some way to put two states back on the agenda.

It’s tough to sit here with the war still going on in Gaza and with everything going on in the West Bank and think that two states is around the corner or to be optimistic about the long-term prospects.

But there’s now an international push on two states that we haven’t seen in decades, and it’s coming from pretty much all quarters save the U.S. And you can argue that the U.S. has now weighed in with the 20-point plan. So I think at some point the Israeli government will seriously grapple with what this means and how they proceed. And when the war in Gaza ends, the push is going to become even more intense. Israel will have to figure out if they will continue to rule it out categorically without any caveats or any future vision for it, or if they’re willing to get behind something like the New York declaration that lays out a vision for two states that has all sorts of things in it that Israel has been demanding for a long time.

If the current government remains in power, I don’t think they’ll engage on two states in any real way, even down the road. But I think a different Israeli government is likely to have the common sense to say “We’re not interested in two states right now. We’re still too close to October 7. There’s still too much that has to happen in terms of eliminating Hamas from Palestinian politics and in terms of PA reform, but we’re at least willing to talk about the pathway back to that, even if it takes a long time.” And I think even if you get that slight opening from the Israeli government, it will give the U.S. and other countries, Arab states in particular, something to work with and to really nest a two-state process in a regional normalization process and try to get this across the finish line, even if it’s still 10, 15, 20 years away.

Why is this happening now? Of course there’s pressure on both sides, but it seemed like Netanyahu was fine with pursuing the war, no matter the international cost or how many civilians Israel killed, as long as he stayed in power. 
The push is coming from Trump. It may be that he is getting sick and tired of having to deal with Gaza and the war. It may be that it’s a direct result of what seems to be the failed Israeli strike in Doha, where if it had been successful, maybe things would’ve been different. But ultimately Israel struck the capital of a major non-NATO U.S. ally, where we have CENTCOM headquarters. And I think that meant Trump had to do something. So this is what emerged, and we’ll see if it works. And if it doesn’t, I think the real risk is that Trump just washes his hands of all of it and tells Netanyahu to do whatever he wants in Gaza. As he’s oddly said to both Russian and Ukraine, best of luck to both of you.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.