Trump’s strong-arming of Netanyahu led to a deal. He must sustain that pressure | Mohamad Bazzi

After nearly nine months in office, Donald Trump seems to have had enough of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, undermining his ambition to establish himself as a global peacemaker. Over the past few weeks, the US president finally decided to use his leverage to force Netanyahu to accept a new ceasefire and stop two years of genocidal war in Gaza. On Thursday, Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, including an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and a partial withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory. It’s unclear what guarantees the US gave to Hamas and Arab mediators to ensure that Netanyahu would not resume the war after the hostage-prisoner swap – if negotiations on later stages of the deal are stalled. That’s what happened earlier this year, when Netanyahu accepted a truce that took effect in January, but then refused to move into the second phase of negotiations with Hamas, and violated the ceasefire after two months. Back in March, Trump was still enamored with his preposterous idea for the US to take control of Gaza and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, displacing 2 million Palestinians. He showed little interest in pressuring Netanyahu to negotiate with Hamas to extend the ceasefire. But in recent weeks, Trump has become personally invested in ending the Gaza war – and his ego might be the one thing that keeps him engaged in preserving a peace agreement that essentially carries his name. It’s been clear since Trump took office that he’s the only world leader who could effectively pressure Netanyahu to end Israel’s war, which has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and triggered a famine in parts of Gaza. The president has considerable leverage over the Israeli premier: billions of dollars in American weapons and constant diplomatic support for Israel at the UN security council, including multiple US vetoes of ceasefire resolutions over the past two years. Like his predecessor Joe Biden, who provided Israel with a virtually unlimited supply of weapons after the October 2023 Hamas attack, Trump also refused to use his influence over Netanyahu. That allowed Israel to defy global outrage and isolation, and continue its onslaught. Related: Beware Netanyahu: he is a master of self-interest – and that’s why he signed the Hamas ceasefire deal | Ben Reiff For two years, Netanyahu has repeatedly sabotaged negotiations and torpedoed potential deals by adding new conditions. He prolonged the war in an evident effort to avoid early parliamentary elections and block an inquiry into his government’s security failures that led to the Hamas attack. His clinging to power also delayed a corruption trial based on an earlier stint as prime minister. Trump, who has faced his own series of charges and convictions in US courts, expressed empathy for Netanyahu, calling the legal case against the Israeli leader a “witch-hunt” that should be thrown out. Last year, the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on charges of using starvation as a method of warfare and other crimes against humanity – and the Trump administration recently retaliated by imposing sanctions against four ICC officials. But Trump appears to have soured on Netanyahu last month, after Israel launched an attack against Qatar, targeting senior Hamas leaders who were meeting in Doha to consider a ceasefire proposal submitted by Arab and US mediators. The Hamas officials, including the group’s top negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, survived the airstrike on 9 September. But the attack outraged Qatar’s leaders, along with other US allies in the region, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These three wealthy Gulf petrostates have each spent tens of billions of dollars on US weapons and other military assistance over the past two decades. They also all happen to have ongoing deals with Trump’s family business for branded real estate projects, hotels and golf resorts worth billions of dollars. Two weeks after the attack on Qatar, Trump met with a group of Arab and Muslim leaders on the sidelines of the UN general assembly. The US administration then circulated a 21-point peace plan that emerged from that meeting, which included a ceasefire, a hostage-prisoner swap, a phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a transitional government led by an international body. The proposal also envisioned creating a temporary governing board for the territory that would be headed by Trump and would include Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. Trump planned to host Netanyahu at the White House on 29 September, and started pressuring the Israeli leader to prepare for a joint announcement. In the days leading up to that meeting, Netanyahu spent hours negotiating with two Trump confidants who had taken a lead role in drafting the new plan: Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, the president’s longtime friend and Middle East envoy. According to reports in the Israeli press, Netanyahu managed to make significant changes to the plan that Trump had negotiated with Arab and Muslim leaders. The prime minister altered the timing of Israeli troop withdrawals, enabling Israel to temporarily keep its forces in more than half of Gaza’s territory, even after Hamas released all of the Israeli hostages. Netanyahu also won concessions on requirements for Hamas to disarm and Israeli troops being able to control a “security perimeter” inside Gaza until the territory is “properly secure from any resurgent terror threat”. That could mean Israel would keep its forces in a section of Gaza indefinitely. At their White House announcement, Trump and Netanyahu presented the plan as an ultimatum for Hamas to release the hostages and lay down its weapons, or face even more severe Israeli attacks – it was framed more as a surrender than a ceasefire. In a video posted after his meeting with Trump, Netanyahu boasted that he got everything he wanted out of the US president. “Now the whole world, including the Arab and Muslim world, is pressuring Hamas to accept the terms that we created together with Trump, to bring back all the hostages – the living and the dead – while the IDF stays in the Strip,” Netanyahu said in Hebrew, in a message aimed at a domestic Israeli audience. “Who would have believed it?” Indeed, some Arab officials worried that Hamas would reject the plan, partly because of Netanyahu’s last-minute amendments that reduced Israel’s commitment to fully withdraw from Gaza and to end the war. Hamas, which was facing pressure from two allies, Qatar and Turkey, did not refuse Trump’s deal, but didn’t fully embrace it. On 3 October, the group announced that it accepted some elements of the plan, while downplaying several key provisions, including those requiring it to disarm and give up any future role in governing Gaza. Hamas’s response was a qualified yes that called for more negotiations – and Netanyahu tried to frame it as a rejection of Trump’s proposal. But the president jumped on the Hamas statement and finally pushed Netanyahu into accepting that an agreement was within reach. After Hamas issued its response, Axios reported that Trump had a tense call with Netanyahu, in which Trump snapped at the prime minister: “I don’t know why you’re always so fucking negative. This is a win. Take it.” Trump’s willingness to strong-arm Netanyahu was the key to achieving the initial deal that is supposed to lead to the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners in the coming days. The president will need to sustain that pressure on Netanyahu to make sure he doesn’t blow up the ceasefire, as he did in March, and resume Israel’s brutal war. Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University