Through the 16 months of the war, Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to say what he predicts about the future of Gaza. However, the day of calculation for both the long Israeli leader and the chopped Palestinian enclave can be close.
Netanyahu is set to meet US President Donald Trump next week at the White House, with the discussion expected to focus if the temporary ceasefire agreed last month – and determined to run for four more weeks – will be a ceasefire permanent.
On the outside, Netanyahu is committed to both goals he set at the beginning of the war: the destruction of Hamas on the Gaza Strip and returning all the hostages seized during the attack of the October 7, 2023 militant group that Israelis say that he killed 1,200 people and caused the conflict.
But it is clearer than ever those goals are almost certainly incompatible. No sooner the fighting was over, starting from the beginning of the process that would eventually turn 33 hostages, than Hamas’ armed persons came out to reassess control over the coastal territory, parade their weapons and organizing mass rallies.
It was a shocking memory for the Israeli public that the often promised “total victory” of Netanyahu-all of a wild offensive that local officials say they killed 47,000 Palestinians-was a chimney.
The war “did not force Hamas to overthrow or launch hostages,” said Michael Miltein, a former Israeli intelligence officer. There were “tactical achievements, but no strategic direction. Hamas is still in power, and still the dominant actor in Gaza. Period. “
International mediators, led by the US, will start talks on the details of a second phase of the ceasefire agreement next week, in what is expected to be torturing negotiations to ensure the freedom of dozens of additional hostages and to Receive the warring parties to agree to agree with a complete stop.
Netanyahu will soon have to decide whether he is ready to see the deal until the conclusion.
On the one hand, he must count on Trump Mercurial, his most important international defender, who armed the Israeli leader to accept the initial 42-day ceasefire and has returned all hostages to his main purpose.
On the other hand, Netanyahu should hold the right -wing members of his cabinet like Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance. Smotrich, who opposed the ceasefire, has pledged to leave and “dismantle” the Netanyahu’s ruling coalition if Israel does not resume the war and repeats Gaza as the first phase of the deal ends in late February.
This is the obvious dilemma that Nadav Straauchler, a political strategist who has worked with Netanyahu in the past, described as “a Bibi sandwich”, referring to the veteran leaders to his nickname.
In fierce contrast to Smotrich, “Trump wants to continue with the deal.. The goal is to end Gaza (war),” he argued.
And yet, in a Trumpian turn, Smotrich and other ultranationalist leaders have captured the repeated calls of the American leader to “clear” Gaza and relocate most of the population to Egypt, Jordan and other Muslim states.
“I am working with the prime minister and the cabinet to prepare an operational plan and ensure that President Trump’s vision is realized,” Smotrich said last week.
While Netanyahu did not weigh on the option – widely condemned as a form of ethnic cleansing that could severely destabilize the region – a person known for the Israeli government’s opinion claimed that Trump’s comments “did not come as a surprise”.
“This is not an idea that just came to Trump,” the person said. “Israel was aware that he would say it. They (Sh.ba and Israel) are lined and coordinated.”
However, many have interpreted Trump’s inflammatory comments as the opening gambite in greater negotiation, not just on the future of Palestinian territory.
Like former US President Joe Biden before him, Trump has made no secret to his desire to link the end of Gaza’s conflict with a broader normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which insists on creating a path “irreversible” in a Palestinian state of normalization with the kingdom would be at the same time an incentive for Netanyahu to end the war – Riyadh is not ready to agree while the conflict withdraws – and secure its inheritance.
While Adam Boehler, Trump’s envoy for hostages, told Israel’s Channel 12 on Wednesday, the Arab states “should present an alternative” if they oppose the US president’s plan. Trump “is always open to different options,” he said.
The favorite choice for Israel and its American allies, however unlikely, is the possibility that Hamas, as part of the second phase negotiations, willingly agrees to put their wings and go into exile.
Netanyahu, said that the person known to the Israeli government thinking, “no longer wants Hamas (in Gaza), and he has supported it.”
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However, more reliable are various schemes navigated by US Arab allies such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to create an internationally supported transient body supported by Palestinian authority to reassess civil control over the enclaves.
However, the Netanyahu government has for the duration of the war refused the permission of the PA, which exercises limited autonomy on the occupied West Coast and was forcibly expelled from Gaza from Hamas in 2007, to return to the ribbon.
Avi Issacharoff, an Israeli and co-creator analyst of Fauda The television series said it includes PA is the only realistic opportunity for an “alternative regime” in Gaza.
“Trump now has to condition the second phase at the entrance to the Pa in the concessions of Gaza and Hamas,” he said. “They have to make Hamas realize that they can’t stay in power.”
Other analysts argue that the high price of Gaza reconstruction – valued at tens of billions of dollars – will limit the power of Hamas’s shopping.
But Miltein, the former Israeli intelligence analist, argued that any such plan is “naive” and forced to fail. He said one without embedded – led by President Octogenarian Mahmoud Abbas – would serve as a fig leaf simply allowing Hamas to remain de facto military power on earth.
Instead, Miltein argued for a third way: to fulfill the entire Gaza ceasefire agreement for hostage, restore all Israelis from captivity and admit that Hamas will remain in power for the foreseeable future- until the next war.
“We cannot live with Hamas in Gaza, but it will require a great campaign where we will have to take over Gaza, stay there for a long time and disassemble Hamas’s rule,” Miltein said. “This needs serious planning, as well as local and international support. It will take years. “
After all, Netanyahu has not ruled out the possibility of returning to war – “in new ways and with great strength,” he said last month – if negotiations with Hamas are separated.
Two people familiar with the matter said Trump and Biden provided Israel with a written guarantee that they would support a return to fighting if Hamas violates the terms of the ceasefire agreement.
Importantly, it remains unclear whether this will include a division in negotiations for the second phase of the agreement.
But for now, Netanyahu has a few weeks to make a decision. This “is a long time in this war,” said Straauchler, the political strategy. “Bibi is not a gambling player – he will get what he thinks are (opposite) options until the last minute, and even beyond, and then choose.”
Map from Aditi bhandari
