“It’s Now or Never,” read the massive banner carried through packed Tel Aviv streets Saturday.
There, some 200,000 Israelis united to demand that U.S. President Donald Trump’s deal to bring home their hostages and end the war in Gaza be finalized – while simultaneously sending a message to their own leadership not to sabotage it.
Protest organizers, long considered a thorn in the side of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, released an aerial photo of the banner amid the crowds. President Trump promptly shared it on his Truth Social account.
Why We Wrote This
Isolated abroad and under constant pressure at home, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no other option but to comply when his chief patron, U.S. President Donald Trump, hailed Hamas’ response to his 20-point peace plan for Gaza.
Tuesday will mark exactly two years since Hamas militants broke through Israel’s border to massacre and take hostage its citizens in the Oct. 7, 2023, assault that sparked the war – the longest in Israel’s history.
Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, conducted with American and Arab intermediaries, are scheduled to begin Monday in Cairo. The resumption of ceasefire talks follows Mr. Trump’s welcoming Friday of Hamas’ approval of parts of his plan, which he said showed Hamas wants peace.
Israeli protesters maintain Mr. Netanyahu has been dragging the war out for political rather than security reasons. Yet the prime minister, who had just recently launched an aggressive military assault on Gaza City, agreed to go along with Mr. Trump’s plan for one simple reason, analysts say: He had no other option but comply.
Israel, writes Nahum Barnea, a veteran Israeli columnist, has no alternative to America, its chief patron and ally.
“Netanyahu and the war have dealt a fatal blow to the support of the Democrats and to the support of a significant part of Trump’s own movement and the Republican Party. This is what happens to a country that puts all its eggs in one orange basket,” he wrote in his column Sunday in Yedioth Ahronoth, the country’s largest newspaper.
Best deal he could get
“Netanyahu has to say yes because of Israel’s international isolation, and within American domestic politics there is no one who will stand up to Trump on Israel,” says Jonathan Rynhold, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University and an expert in US-Israeli relations.
That said, Dr. Rynhold argues, what Mr. Netanyahu did manage to do last Monday before the joint White House press conference at which Mr. Trump announced his 20-point plan, was to secure the best terms possible – within constraints – for Israel.
“He had to say yes overall,” says Dr. Rynhold. “But he managed to influence the terms of the plan to make it much easier for him to sell at home,” citing the wording around a pathway to Palestinian statehood, the depth of Israel’s phased withdrawal from Gaza, and the major win of a commitment for Hamas’ disarmament.
Israel’s failed attempt to kill senior Hamas leaders in Qatar last month in a missile attack seems to have also further tied Mr. Netanyahu’s hands. A New York Times report described how the attack angered the White House so much that it pivoted away from giving Israel de facto carte blanche in Gaza to pressuring it to agree to a ceasefire. The report was shared by Mr. Trump on Truth Social Sunday.
For Israelis, the biggest win of all would be the return of the hostages still held by Hamas, 48 in total, some 20 of whom are considered to still be alive. The extreme hardship of those still held after an initial 251 were taken hostage has exacted a heavy emotional and psychological cost in a small embattled country like Israel, whose ethos has always been to leave no one behind in battle.
On Sunday in Washington, when a reporter from Israel’s Channel 14, a right-wing Israeli news outlet considered loyal to Mr. Netanyahu, asked Mr. Trump a critical question about the deal, he fired back: “It’s a great deal for Israel, and it’s a great deal for everybody. You want to get your hostages back, right? Or you don’t want them back?”
Dissent in Netanyahu’s coalition
In a show of Mr. Trump’s sway, the Israeli army quickly announced it was scaling down operations in Gaza after the president said Friday he expected Israel to stop bombing the beleaguered strip. Some 67,000 Gazans have been killed since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Mr. Netanyahu made a brief video statement Saturday saying Israel was “on the brink of a major achievement.” But, he noted, “It’s still not final. We are working hard on it. … I hope that, with God’s help, in the coming days … we will be able to announce the return of all the hostages – the living and the slain – in one go, with the Israel Defense Forces still deployed deep in Gaza.”
By emphasizing that the hostages could be freed while the army is still in Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu seemed to be trying to deflect harsh criticism of the deal from within his own government, the most extreme right-wing coalition in the country’s history.
The U.S. plan derails the hard right’s own plan not only to finish flattening the already largely destroyed Gaza Strip as a deterrent message, but to resettle it and claim sovereignty over the West Bank. Such moves would fully quash, they believe, a future Palestinian state.
Gayil Talshir, a political science lecturer at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says Mr. Netanyahu is scrambling to satisfy both Mr. Trump and his coalition partners and the Israeli public that, according to polls, is overwhelmingly in favor of the U.S. deal.
“That’s why in English he says it’s a great plan – and in statements in Hebrew to the Israeli public [that] this is the great win over Hamas – but speaking in a third language he speaks to his base and government ministers and says, ‘This is great, we will get hostages back and then we can wage any kind of war we want in Gaza because Hamas will clearly violate the deal’s conditions and we will be the ones deciding how to proceed,’” says Dr. Talshir.
Seemingly backing that up were Mr. Trump’s comments Sunday to CNN that Hamas would be “obliterated” if they do not comply with the truce plan.
Giora Eiland, a retired major-general, says there are other security reasons Israel should sign on to an agreement. Most importantly, he says, is the need to prepare for another round of war with Israel’s arch foe, Iran.
“I think we will have another war with Iran in the next two to three years, and we need a lot of attention and focus and money and to allocate more resources on this real existential threat,” he said at a briefing.
