On the altar of Netanyahu’s political survival

Following his statements of the last few weeks that the war in Gaza must end and the hostages be brought home, once again, all of our hopes were placed in Trump, and they have been dashed.

We are faced with the most absurd situation Israelis have ever experienced. We must turn to foreign governments and foreign leaders for help to bring all of our hostages home and end the war because our leadership, our prime minister, is blind, deaf, and totally apathetic to the calls of the majority of Israel. There is no sympathy, empathy or the touch of responsibility. All that exists is an overwhelming and pathological need to hold onto power no matter the cost.

Therefore, we have turned to the one person, besides his wife, who can force Netanyahu to do things, in this case, to end the war and bring home all the hostages. That person is Trump. The only real reason that Trump wants to end the war is to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His entire first term was dedicated to destroying and erasing as much of Obama’s accomplishments as possible, and that includes his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize (which he won for words and nothing else). Since then, it has been a major focus for Trump to see how he can receive this prize. He has failed on the Ukraine/Russia front, and his easiest path is with our war in Gaza. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t really care about the hostages or that our soldiers are being killed and maimed daily or the Gazans being killed en masse by our bombings still to this day. It is the prize. So what! If we can use that to our advantage and get him to force Netanyahu to end the war, then fine, let him get the prize. All we want is the hostages home.

We have already seen twice how Trump forced Netanyahu to do things he didn’t want to do. The first was the last hostage deal, which was supposed to be in two phases, the first to bring home 33 hostages (living and dead), and the second to bring home the rest of the hostages and end the war. Netanyahu breached the agreement and refused to negotiate for Phase 2 without any immediate repercussions.

The second instance of Trump’s force was following the institution of the ceasefire with Iran after they immediately breached the agreement with a missile attack. Netanyahu ordered a major retaliation and had Defense Minister Katz dispatch 52 jet fighters to Iran to bomb major targets. Trump ‘ordered’ Netanyahu to call off the attack, and he did. He left one jet to bomb a minor target of an anti-aircraft cell outside of Tehran. This was symbolic and was meant to send a message.

So, we have seen the power that Trump has over Netanyahu. The problem, though, is that Netanyahu is much smarter than Trump and has succeeded in wrapping him around his finger in every instance but one (when Trump instituted tariffs worldwide, also on Israel, and Netanyahu was summoned to the White House. Trump wanted to show Netanyahu that he had the power and brought Netanyahu only to show him that he is the boss and wouldn’t reduce or eliminate the tariffs on Israel. It was a huge embarrassment to Netanyahu.)

In the last weeks, Trump’s statements about the war seemed unequivocal and therefore, we all pinned our hopes that he was going to lay down the law to Netanyahu. Netanyahu was fully aware of this and extremely wary. He had his people preparing for the exit of Ben Gvir from the government and even the minuscule possibility that Smotrich would follow suit in the event that he had to follow Trump’s orders and end the war post haste. Netanyahu’s people began meeting with some opposition leaders, in particular Benny Gantz, about joining the coalition if the others bolt. After all, the most important thing to Netanyahu in the whole world is maintaining his government so he will remain prime minister.

Along with the back room meetings and dealings, Netanyahu was also planning on how he would deal with Trump because he knows that he can’t say no to him. These plans included convincing him that he would get everything he wanted, ending the war and bringing home the hostages, but he would need to rely on Netanyahu to do it in his timeframe and not as an immediate action. Netanyahu’s time frame is for the initial 60-day ceasefire with getting some hostages home, and then for the next phase, which would include ending the war, to take at least another 60 days. This aligns perfectly with his other plans of fending off the religious Haredi parties and their army exemption demands until the Knesset goes on summer recess of three months, and that takes us to the Jewish High Holidays in the fall when nothing really happens in the Knesset, and that brings us to the end of 2025. It is at that time that Netanyahu will declare his ‘total victory’ in Gaza and agree to early elections in the first quarter of 2026.

His problem was how to get Trump to go along with his timeframe, but he also believed that it wasn’t going to be a big problem at all.

Trump wants Netanyahu to stay prime minister and be elected again. He already did what no other US president has ever done before. He tried to interfere with the Israeli judicial system by calling for Netanyahu’s trials to be cancelled because he is such a ‘hero’ and asset to Israel. The easiest way for Netanyahu to present to Trump his plan and get his acceptance is to show Trump that he will get everything he wants but not immediately. That includes ending the war, getting the hostages home, enabling Netanyahu and his cronies to push for Trump’s plan of emptying Gaza from Palestinians for the “Trump Gaza” plan, and keeping his BFF Netanyahu in power, and most of all, his path to the Nobel Peace Prize. On the other hand, Netanyahu would show Trump that if he pushed for immediate results, Netanyahu’s government would fall before he has the time he needs for his distancing from October 7, and to run his full election campaign (which he already started with his visit to Nir Oz and Ofakim 21 months too late), and therefore there was a good chance he would lose the elections and wouldn’t remain as prime minister. These arguments alone would probably be convincing enough, but Netanyahu needed to sweeten the deal to make it irresistible. And because a narcissist knows better than anyone else what a fellow narcissist needs and desires, Netanyahu produced the cherry on top by handing Trump his letter of recommendation to the Nobel Peace Prize committee for Trump to be nominated for the prize.
How could Trump refuse Netanyahu now?

And what was the cost of all of this? For Netanyahu, nothing at all. The costs to Israel? The lives of the hostages and the lives of soldiers still in Gaza. For Netanyahu, these lives are just fodder for his War of Political Survival, nothing more. The suffering and deaths of the hostages, the deaths and maiming of more soldiers, don’t keep him up at night. They are the price of his need to stay prime minister because he doesn’t believe that anyone else is entitled to hold that position. He like Trump believes that they alone must sit on their thrones and everyone else be damned.

And this is precisely what Netanyahu got. Instead of Trump making a bombastic announcement of a ceasefire deal, as he publicly promised multiple times, he rolled over for his BFF and gave Netanyahu all that he wanted. No announcement was made, Witkoff’s impending trip to Qatar to seal the deal has been indefinitely postponed, and the Israeli negotiating team is still made up of ‘junior’ negotiators and Netanyahu’s guard dog to make sure that nothing is discussed that Netanyahu doesn’t want to be brought up.

The last hostage releases of 33 hostages and the single release of Edan Alexander were all accomplished because of the US Administration. Netanyahu was just following orders. All of our hopes that Netanyahu would finally do the right thing have forever gone up in smoke and the hopes we pinned on Trump forcing Netanyahu to do the right thing have been utterly destroyed. When it appeared that Trump was losing patience with Netanyahu and wouldn’t put up with Netanyahu’s typical BS, our hopes rose to the highest levels with cautious feelings of optimism. But the one thing that has been consistent throughout the war is that optimism connected to Netanyahu is something that will be bashed and leave us in a continued state of desperation.

The only thing we can cling to right now is that the talks are still going on in Qatar and that Trump does have full expectations that a deal will be reached. We don’t know how long Trump will give to Netanyahu to reach that deal, but we do know that it will be a horrible deal that maintains the Netanyahu creation of phased releases while leaving many of the hostages behind in captivity without any date or estimation of when the last hostage will be brought home. All of this misery, suffering, death, destruction, hopelessness, all of it perpetrated on the altar of Netanyahu’s political survival.

“I’ve never met them,
But I miss them.
I’ve never met them,
but I think of them every second.
I’ve never met them,
but they are my family.
BRING THEM HOME NOW!!!”