But Netanyahu now finds himself squeezed by domestic political concerns and by geopolitical pressure from Trump and from Muslim and Arab nations across the Middle East. Countries far and wide greeted Friday night’s developments as if peace had already broken out.
“He will find himself with the entire world clapping, and he needs to explain why he’s against it,” said Eran Etzion, a former deputy national security adviser under three other Israeli prime ministers, and a senior foreign affairs official earlier in Netanyahu’s tenure.
A demonstrator in Madrid, Spain holds the Palestinian flag and a poster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of terrorism and genocide.Credit: AP
In a nationally televised address Saturday night, Netanyahu did not reject the Hamas bid for negotiations. Rather, he made clear his desire to limit those talks to just a few days, and his intent to retain the option to revert to military action in the event that Hamas balks at laying down its arms.
Still, Trump’s call for the Israeli military to stand down immediately – with negotiations to follow between Israel and Hamas – could not have been welcomed by the prime minister, Etzion said. “These negotiations will be conducted under the conditions of a ceasefire, which is contrary to Netanyahu’s design,” he said. “Netanyahu wanted this all to take place under Israeli military pressure.”
The turn of events Friday night was also likely to threaten Netanyahu’s governing coalition. His right-wing partners had already been informed, through Trump’s Monday proposal, that they would have to abandon their dreams of forcing Palestinians to leave Gaza for good, allowing Israelis to settle and annex the coastal enclave. Now they were effectively being told that Hamas would not be going away after all, and might not even agree to disarm.
“I don’t see how his coalition partners can live with that,” said Shira Efron, an analyst on Israeli policy at Rand Corp, a think tank.
US President Donald Trump has treated Hamas’ response to the 20-point plan as endorsement.Credit: AP
“If Netanyahu wants to market it as an achievement, he can,” she said, by noting the Trump plan would end the war, return the hostages, replace Hamas with some other entity to govern Gaza, and bring Arab and Muslim nations in to help with the stabilisation and reconstruction of the enclave.
“But his partners were hoping for a different story,” Efron said. “An unrealistic story.”
What is realistic, of course, is far from certain. As hopeful as the initial statements from Hamas and Israel may have sounded to those desperate for an end to the war, many potential obstacles stand in the way, analysts said, including delaying tactics and outbreaks of violence.
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“It’s not over yet,” said Eyal Hulata, who was Israel’s national security adviser under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and now is a fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a think tank.
What worried Hulata most, he said, was the possibility that Hamas and Netanyahu were merely play-acting – tailoring their statements “to appease President Trump’s demands” but with “no intention of doing what it takes”.
Still, some were daring to hope – and not just for an end to the Gaza war.
Etzion argued that Netanyahu had become so isolated on the world stage that it was possible now to envision a post-Netanyahu Israel and even a rebirth of a broader peace process with the Palestinians.
He said there was “the regional and international climate, even potentially the internal Palestinian climate,” for a renewed political process. “Nothing is easy, but it’s possible, if we have a ceasefire.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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