United States President Donald Trump has been triumphal since the announcement that Palestinian group Hamas had agreed to hand over its weaponry in Gaza.
But the terms of Thursday’s disarmament agreement also stipulate that Israel should withdraw from the Palestinian enclave, and gradually transfer power to a Palestinian administration – conditions that have been met with a frosty reception by Israeli politicians and in the Israeli press.
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The Israeli government has yet to officially comment, but one unnamed senior Israeli official told reporters on Friday that, despite “various publications” reporting “diplomatic progress in the Gaza Strip”, there would be no withdrawal from Israel’s current positions within Gaza before what it determines to be “the genuine disarmament of Hamas”.
Trump, for his part, has said that Israel was “very happy” with the deal.
Electoral suicide
Many Israelis continue to espouse a hard line towards Palestinians in Gaza after the October ۷, ۲۰۲۳, Hamas-led attack on Israel, which was launched from the territory. That is despite Israel subsequently conducting a genocidal war on Gaza, killing more than ۷۳,۰۰۰ Palestinians and destroying the enclave.
A May poll found that ۸۲ percent of Jewish Israeli respondents supported the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Gaza – the same poll found that ۵۶ percent of respondents supported the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homes too.
Another poll, a month later, found that ۶۴ percent of those surveyed believed there were “no innocents” among the Palestinians in Gaza.
And many Israeli politicians – including government ministers – have said that illegal Jewish settlements, akin to the ones dividing the occupied West Bank, will soon come to Gaza.
The prospect, therefore, of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and steps towards the enclave’s reconstruction are unpalatable to many Israelis, with politicians quick to condemn the disarmament agreement.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir denounced it as “unacceptable”.
“A commitment to stop the assassinations of [Hamas’s] murderers is tantamount to agreeing to Hamas organising for the next massacre,” Ben-Gvir wrote on social media. “The assassinations in Gaza must continue, the encouragement of emigration must happen. Israel must win.”
The term “encouragement of emigration” is widely regarded as referring to ethnic cleansing.
Politicians regarded as centrists, such as former chief of staff and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leading rival in the coming election, Gadi Eisenkot, were equally sceptical. He said that any deal that stopped short of the war’s objectives – the destruction of Hamas’s military-political power – was a total failure.
“Nearly three years have passed since the morning of October ۷,” Eisenkot wrote, “and Hamas has renewed its strength with a number of terrorists similar to the evening of October ۶.”
Politics of peace
Netanyahu has yet to comment, but US-Israeli pollster and consultant Dahlia Scheindlin suggested the stakes are high for the prime minister with an election only a few months away.
Netanyahu’s likely best chance of avoiding a jail sentence if he is found guilty of numerous corruption charges rests on him winning the October elections.
But the opposition are currently leading in many polls, and may be able to gain enough seats to form a government.
“Netanyahu’s considerations have nothing to do with public trauma [from the October ۷ attack],” Scheindlin said, and everything to do with politics. “He will care primarily – probably exclusively – about what his current coalition partners think.”
Withdrawing from Gaza was out of the question, Scheindlin said, adding that whatever gambit Netanyahu undertook to maintain his coalition and encourage right-wing voters to support him had to be accomplished without further alienating his allies in the US, who appear to have grown increasingly frustrated with him.
“[Netanyahu] will not want to be seen by Trump and the Americans as undermining any possible moves towards implementing this agreement. And so, therefore, he might manage some very symbolic moving of the Israeli army within Gaza,” she said.
One tactic, Scheindlin suggested, could be for the Israeli military to withdraw back to the positions it was supposed to be in as part of the October ۲۰۲۵ ceasefire agreement. Israel has killed more than ۱,۲۰۰ Palestinians since that agreement, and also repeatedly expanded the territory under its control, ignoring the deal.
Keeping Trump happy
Managing US expectations of Israel is likely to be a problem, not just for Netanyahu, but for all of the politicians vying for leadership of the country.
One anonymous US official has already said that Trump would be “very, very disappointed” if Israel did not adhere to the disarmament agreement.
“Netanyahu already faces an uphill battle in forming any government, more so if he agrees to this,” said Dov Waxman, professor of Israel studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Netanyahu has previously been able to sidestep requirements placed on Israel when it comes to Gaza, maintaining unity within his far-right coalition, with some members repeatedly threatening to bring the government down if the war ended without Hamas’s total defeat.
He may be silent on the latest deal for now, but he will eventually have to speak.
“That could be a real problem,” Waxman said, “because, if he criticises the deal, he risks angering Trump who – though he hasn’t endorsed him [in the Israeli election] yet – he must be hoping will deliver him some kind of present during the election cycle, whether that’s a further call for his pardon or normalisation with Saudi Arabia, maybe both. But he has to keep Trump on his side.”
And while the Israeli public has grown sceptical that Israeli security remains at the forefront of the Trump administration’s priorities, the need for the US security umbrella is accepted by the vast majority of the public and political establishment, elements of which have seized upon any potential fracturing in it as a means to criticise Netanyahu.
“Netanyahu has shown himself to be very good in the past at handling these kinds of things,” Nimrod Goren, president and founder of Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, said.
“He’ll make sure Trump gets his announcement, his signing ceremony and all the optics are in place, but I don’t see him withdrawing from Gaza,” Goren said.
“I think the idea of him withdrawing goes further than just public opinion,” the Israeli analyst added. “It goes against his whole philosophy, ideology and worldview: that Israel needs to be present beyond its borders and everywhere bad intentions could be turned into action. If anything, I see him escalating in the build-up to the election rather than discussing withdrawal.”
