The turning point came during the United Nations General Assembly last week in New York. No, I’m not talking about the flurry of European countries that recognized a Palestinian state. Netanyahu was vocal in criticizing these symbolic gestures, but he knows they were just that – symbolic. Palestinian recognition doesn’t change any facts on the ground and carries little political cost for Netanyahu when a majority of Israelis oppose the two-state solution.
The first serious red line was drawn by the United Arab Emirates when it warned that it would pull out of the Abraham Accords if Jerusalem moves ahead with plans to annex the West Bank, killing any remaining hopes for a two-state solution, and with it, President Donald Trump’s signature foreign-policy achievement. Then, Trump himself drew a public red line against West Bank annexation while pushing a Gaza peace plan rejecting mass displacement that he negotiated with Arab and Muslim leaders on the sidelines of UNGA. The real catalyst for Trump's pivot to pressure Netanyahu came three weeks earlier, after Israel struck Qatar in a botched attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders, killing a Qatari security official in the process. The strike didn't just fail – it jeopardized relations with one of America's most important regional partners and taxed Trump's patience with Bibi’s go-it-alone approach.
Netanyahu got the message. Just days after vowing to “finish the job” of fully destroying Hamas before a largely empty UN plenum, Bibi came out of his Monday meeting with Trump saying the president’s peace plan “achieves our war aims.” Trump even got Netanyahu to call the Qatari emir to apologize for the strike. After almost two years of near-total intransigence and free rein, the turnaround was striking.
While there’s no public final text yet, the 20-point framework released by the White House includes: no annexation and no displacement at scale; all hostages (dead and alive) returned within 72 hours, thousands of Palestinian prisoners released, and humanitarian aid flows to resume; phased and gradual Israeli troop withdrawal; Hamas to disarm and cede power; international trusteeship of the Gaza Strip with regional participation on governance, security, and reconstruction; and a loose commitment to keep a path to Palestinian statehood alive, if barely.
This isn’t exactly what Arab leaders had agreed to last week. During his White House meeting with Trump, Netanyahu successfully reshaped the contours of the plan – which had been deliberately crafted in his absence – to better align with his political needs. Regional governments bristled at the changes, but they appear willing to back the plan anyway. Trump sweetened the deal with an unprecedented NATO-style security guarantee for Qatar, the first such commitment to an Arab state (though surely not the last).
There’s something in the framework for all sides to like and dislike – the mark of a good compromise. Palestinians and their regional backers get the promise of no annexation and no displacement, plus the hope – however faint – of future statehood. Netanyahu gets all the hostages back, Hamas disarmed and out of power, a security buffer, and Arab partners shouldering the bulk of Gaza's security and reconstruction. The Palestinian Authority gets a role down the line but would be out of the picture for the foreseeable future, while the statehood language is vague enough to give Netanyahu plausible deniability at home.
Make no mistake, accepting a ceasefire is a political gamble for Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister may struggle to keep his coalition together after agreeing to terms that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and other hard-right allies have ruled unacceptable. But that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker – or a career-ender for Bibi. If his far-right partners bolt, he could potentially fall back on opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, who’ve publicly backed the proposal and have hinted they may give Bibi a lifeline, to stay in power and out of jail. Plus, what Israelis want is to bring the hostages home and keep the troops out of harm’s way, so a ceasefire that delivers those outcomes is politically sellable. Netanyahu could run on the ceasefire-and-hostage deal next fall – or he could call early elections to bank the fresh gains from his Iran "win" while pushing the fiscal pain of years of war into the next term.
In fact, the riskier long-term play for Netanyahu may be to reject peace and stay the present course. To be sure, you shouldn’t bet on Trump suddenly being willing to use real pressure (economic or military) against Netanyahu to actually enforce his red lines. More likely, the US president would huff in frustration at not being able to claim a Nobel Peace Prize while trying to wash his hands of the issue. But if Palestinians are removed from Gaza in large numbers or if the West Bank is annexed, the costs will become real for Israel – no matter what Trump does or doesn’t do. More Americans will keep turning on the Jewish state and voting in leaders responsive to their preferences. The Abraham Accords will unravel. And though Europeans wouldn’t muster EU-wide sanctions (unanimity is too high a bar), the pain from bilateral visa restrictions, investment curbs, and cultural boycotts will add up.
Netanyahu won’t pay a political price for prolonging the suffering in Gaza or rejecting Palestinian statehood. He’d most certainly pay one for making Israelis feel visibly isolated internationally. It may sound geopolitically inconsequential, but being barred from Dubai, Eurovision, or FIFA would resonate more powerfully with Netanyahu’s voters than a thousand UN resolutions. The prospect of Israel becoming apartheid South Africa is real and scary to most Israelis. That’s where the lever is now.
Hamas gets a vote, too, and it remains to be seen how it’ll respond to the peace proposal. The group has been severely degraded over the past two years, but it’s still the dominant military and political power in Gaza and maintains the ability to inflict damage on Israeli troops. It’s under pressure from multiple directions – Arab and Muslim stakeholders, especially its regional backers Qatar and Turkey, are pushing it to accept the ceasefire on offer for the sake of an immediate end to the bloodshed, while Trump has warned that he'll give the Israelis carte blanche to continue their military campaign if Hamas doesn't agree by Thursday. An outright refusal seems unlikely, but it's equally hard to imagine the group will surrender its weapons and give up what leverage it has left – the remaining hostages – without trying to at least negotiate less suicidal terms.
Even if both sides get to a “yes” in principle, peace would be far from guaranteed. The plan in its present form is too vague to be operationalized, and it could take several months of negotiation to hammer out all the details. Implementation would depend on Hamas and Netanyahu swallowing hard in ways they’ve long resisted. Every stage would be a tripwire, fraught with risks and opportunities for both sides to stall while blaming the other for failure.
But if a deal does go through and sticks, it would set the region on a radically better path than the one it’s currently on. Trump will have earned credit for it – something this author would be very happy to give him.
