With Gaza plan, Trump throws Netanyahu toughest dare: making peace with Palestinians

Two years after Hamas triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip with its all-out invasion of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be facing the toughest moment of his decades-long career. His principal supporter, US President Donald Trump, has told him to make peace with Palestinians — and he would not take no for an answer.

But Netanyahu cannot afford peace.

Domestically, continuing the war favours Netanyahu, and, indeed, prolonging the conflict with the Palestinians has always worked to his advantage, and now Trump’s push for peace has cornered him, says Muddassir Quamar, a scholar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Centre for West Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi.

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In an unprecedented situation, Netanyahu has been restrained by the terms of Trump’s Gaza proposal whereas Hamas has been negotiating with the White House.

For Netanyahu, the stakes are high — almost existential. For nearly three decades, he has worked to deny Palestinians a state, undermine the Palestinian Authority (PA), and lay the groundwork to annex Gaza and the West Bank.

But Trump —whom Netanyahu hailed as the “greatest friend”— has risked unravelling decades of his efforts. With the 20-point plan, he has told the Israeli leader that he cannot annex Gaza, must withdraw from most of the strip, make way for its handover to the PA, and accept the creation of a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

Trump’s rite of passage & Netanyahu’s reckoning

For many years, every US president has had a rite of passage: seeing their Middle East agenda be derailed by Netanyahu. Trump faced that moment last week, but he appears to have finally read the riot act to the long-time Israeli leader.

With his 20-point plan for Gaza, Trump told Netanyahu to accept the proposal and continue having the US support for Israel or reject it and see the US support vanish. Grudgingly, Netanyahu accepted the proposal — until he did not.

In the Middle East, leaders’ words in English mean little. It is what they say in their native tongue —Hebrew, or Arabic in the case of Arab leaders— to their own people that truly matters.

After accepting the Gaza proposal beside Trump in English, Netanyahu rejected it in Hebrew just hours later. He announced that the Israeli military “will remain in most of the Gaza Strip” and “we will strongly oppose a Palestinian state” — contrary to the proposal’s main points.

Trump’s proposal explicitly said that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza” and outlined phased withdrawal. Moreover, the proposal said that with progress in Gaza’s redevelopment and the handover of the strip to the reformed PA, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognise as the aspiration of the Palestinian people”.

Trump was incensed — as his subsequent reactions show

Trump told Netanyahu in no uncertain terms: if he wanted to save face, he would have to make a deal with Hamas under the framework of the 20-point proposal.

When Hamas responded with a partial ‘yes’ and sought negotiations, Netanyahu —as has been his wont for decades— declared it meant nothing, but Trump silenced him.

“I don’t know why you’re always so f***ng negative. This is a win. Take it,” Trump told Netanyahu, according to Axios.

Previously, referring to their conversation, Trump had told the outlet, “I said, ‘Bibi, this is your chance for victory.’ He was fine with it. He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine.”

ALSO READ: Netanyahu has now joined Trump to kill 2-state solution, here’s how his stand evolved over years

With his Gaza proposal and replies to Netanyahu, Trump made it clear that the US support to Israel was never absolute and was dependent on US interests aligning with those of Israel, says Alvite Ningthoujam, a scholar of West Asian affairs and the Deputy Director of Symbiosis School of International Studies (SSIS) at Symbiosis International University, Pune.

Ningthoujam tells Firstpost, “President Trump has sought to set the record straight with Prime Minister Netanyahu about the nature of US support for Israel and control the damage in the region from Israeli actions like the strikes in Doha. He has also made it clear that Israel no longer has a friend in the region and the United States is all that it has got. With the war in Gaza, the Abraham Accords now only exist on paper. With the Gaza proposal, President Trump has offered Prime Minister Netanyahu a face-saving exit that would allow Israel an off-ramp and give the United States an opportunity to restore its lost standing in the region.”

Trump’s message was clear. He was running the show and Netanyahu had to fall in line. For once, the long-time Israeli leader was boxed in a disaster of his own making.

Netanyahu has to make peace with Palestinians. But can he?

This is at least the third time in the ongoing war that a deal has been on the table — and Netanyahu has been accused of trying to derail it.

In the first instance, former US President Joe Biden outlined an Israel-endorsed proposal in May 2024 that sought to end the war in three phases.

Within weeks, Netanyahu inserted a slew of new demands into the proposal and Hamas dubbed it a non-starter. The war stretched on until January and it was in the final week of Biden’s term that a ceasefire was reached.

In the second instance, the ceasefire that Biden struck in coordination with the incoming Trump administration never reached its intended conclusion as Netanyahu resumed the war after the first phase of the deal.

In the third instance, Netanyahu has tried to derail the plan now with his rejection of main points of Trump’s proposal. But, as Trump has rebuked him, it does not appear the Israeli leader has many choices left. In Israel as well as the United States, he has isolated himself to the extent that he barely has friends other than Trump, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich, and they are pulling him in opposite directions.

In Biden’s term, Netanyahu prolonged the war with the hope that he would conclude the conflict on his own terms under Trump. But, now after putting all eggs in Trump’s basket, Netanyahu has received a reality check that he may have overstepped and cornered himself.

Trump has made it clear that Netanyahu has to make peace with Palestinians. But Netanyahu may find it impossible after moving in the opposite direction throughout his career.

Until President Trump’s push, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not have any real pressure to end the war, says Quamar, the scholar of West Asia and an associate professor at Centre for West Asian Studies at JNU, Delhi.

Quamar tells Firstpost, “Despite protests in Israel, there was support for the war from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-right base, and prolonging the war essentially prolonged his tenure. Despite rising recognition of the Palestinian state and talk of Israel’s isolation internationally, Israel was not really isolated as there was not any change in Israeli actions in Gaza, West Bank, or West Asia. Instead, it kept ramping up offensives as the international outrage grew. But that changed with President Trump’s push.”

Trump offers Netanyahu a face-saving. But can he take the offer?

At home, protests against Netanyahu are raging. After all, following two years of war, tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths, and more than a thousand Israeli soldiers killed, Netanyahu has failed to achieve any of the objectives with which he began the war: the return of the hostages, the defeat of Hamas, and the removal of Hamas from Gaza.

Abroad, Netanyahu is more isolated than ever and Israel’s reputation is in tatters.

And, finally, Trump has given him a way out, but Netanyahu may have gone beyond the point of no return to take the deal and save face. At home, his government is at the risk of collapse as his far-right allies —Ben-Gvir and Smotrich— have made it clear that they do not want the war to stop and instead want to annex the West Bank and Gaza.

Ben-Gvir has rejected Trump’s proposal, saying “we will in no way be partners to that”.

“We cannot agree under any circumstances to a scenario in which the terrorist organisation that brought the greatest calamity upon the State of Israel is revived,” Ben-Gvir further said.

Separately, Smotrich said that pausing attacks in Gaza was a “grave mistake”. He further said that the pause would erode Israel’s position.

Without Ben-Gvir and Smotrich —who have 13 seats in the 64-member coalition where 61 is the majority-mark— Netanyahu’s government will collapse. And that could end his career as well as corruption charges against him and political scandals are likely to make his return difficult if not land him in prison altogether.

To be sure, Netanyahu can take the deal and survive. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has said he would support the government if extremists would withdraw in opposition to a deal. But Lapid’s involvement in the government would mean that Netanyahu would not be able to run his agenda unrestrained.

President Trump’s proposal can, in fact, be good for Prime Minister Netanyahu as it fulfils some of the core Israeli demands, such as Hamas’ removal from power in Gaza and disarmament, says Ningthoujam, the Deputy Director of SSIS, Pune.

Ningthoujam says, “Even in the case of Palestinian statehood, the proposal only talks about a distant pathway and does not make any solid commitment. While it would not bring any immediate change, it would check international outrage and wave of recognition of Palestinian statehood. President Trump’s proposal could therefore benefit Prime Minister Netanyahu. But his allies’ positions are so extreme that even such a face-saving proposal may not be acceptable to them.”

But whether Netanyahu has it in him to accept it and start a new chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian story remains to be seen.

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