Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at district court in Tel Aviv for his hearing on corruption charges Dec. 10. Photo by Menahem Kahana/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Columnist Dan Perry January 13, 2025

Breathless media reports indicate that Israel and Hamas are nearing a ceasefire agreement that would, in two stages, end the Gaza war in exchange for the release of the 98 remaining hostages, dozens of whom are dead. Such a deal would be received in Israel, as well as in Gaza, with jubilation.

But what is astounding — at least to anyone who still places any faith in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — is that the deal will almost certainly leave Hamas, which massacred almost 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in power in Gaza.

If current accounts prove accurate, the deal amounts to an acceptance of Hamas terms that have been on the table essentially since the onset of the conflict. Yet just last month, Netanyahu was telling The Wall Street Journal that he was “not going to agree to end the war before we remove Hamas … We’re not going to leave them in power in Gaza, 30 miles from Tel Aviv. It’s not going to happen.” What this means is that Netanyahu is primed to execute an about-face that makes obvious that he has prolonged this war, unnecessarily, for at least half a year. And he’s doing it, almost certainly, because of the imminent return to office of President-elect Donald Trump.

How do we know that this deal is proof of that first item? President Joe Biden announced last May that Israel itself had offered such a ceasefire deal, which merely remained to be sorted out in the details — for example, how many hostages would be released in each stage; how many Palestinian prisoners in Israel would be released; and whether Hamas would receive Israeli guarantees to see through the deal to the end.

But then Netanyahu appeared to get cold feet, and began suddenly insisting that Israel needed to hold on to the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, which is the Gaza-Egypt border, to prevent smuggling. The talks foundered, and in the ensuing months, more hostages were killed, along with thousands more civilian Palestinians and hundreds of Israeli troops — including five soldiers, just today.

And for what, exactly? The controversial Philadelphi Corridor condition — which now appears to have been dropped.

“As the details emerge, this deal was on the table at least since August,” reserve general Yisrael Ziv told Israel’s Channel 12 TV on Monday. Israel is now agreeing to what it scuttled before, just “with fewer living hostages than we could have had in August.”

So what changed?

Well, Trump was elected, and has repeatedly threatened that there would be “hell to pay” if no ceasefire deal were reached by inauguration day — and while most listeners assumed he was threatening Hamas, we cannot be sure. Netanyahu prizes Trump as an ally; it’s not surprising that he might take previously unexpected steps to appease him. And he wants the protection Trump seems primed to try to afford him on the international stage.

Netanyahu needs that insulation more, now, than he does domestic help, after he coaxed four opposition Knesset members to join his coalition in November, reducing the power in his cabinet of several fanatical nationalists who had previously impeded a deal. One of them, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, declared Monday that the emerging deal would be “a national security catastrophe.”

Smotrich and his allies — such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — would prefer a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza, and the establishment of new Jewish settlements in the strip.

So, yes, the fact that a deal now truly appears imminent gives even more heft to the already-believable charges that Netanyahu has delayed this deal due to personal political concerns. Despite the expectation of recriminations in this vein, the deal will be popular in Israel, where polls consistently show that at least 70% of the public wants an end to the war (and more than half believed Netanyahu was prolonging it for political reasons). To be clear, I support it myself.

Netanyahu will probably try to evade these recriminations by arguing that Israel’s military achievements of the autumn — in particular its evisceration of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the subsequent (and almost certainly related) collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria — were game-changers. And there are expectations Trump might “reward” Israel for the deal by seeking to mollify its far right, perhaps by tolerating increased settlement activity in the West Bank.

Either way, if a deal does come through, as we celebrate its long-sought benefits we must not lose sight of the missed opportunities of the war, which are staggering.

Start with the loss of life. At least 74 hostages have died in captivity; at least 46,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, a number that Israel does not dispute; and 407 IDF soldiers have lost their lives inside the strip. Was all this necessary? The Biden administration has, for a year, practically begged Netanyahu to accept a grand vision for the day after the war, which would have included Israeli normalization with Saudi Arabia in exchange for a return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza — from which Hamas expelled it in 2007 — and the acceptance of renewed peace talks on a Palestinian state. As part of that, the Biden administration envisioned the creation of a U.S.-led military alliance including Israel and the moderate Sunni states arrayed against Iran and its proxies — which would have been a strategic coup of the highest order.

Incredibly, Netanyahu appears poised to demonstrate that he prefers to accept Hamas’ terms — likely because Smotrich and Ben-Gvir would not approve of the PA. Consequently, the government’s talking points on TV panels prominently feature the preposterous claim that the PA — which actively fights Hamas, and arrests its operatives in the West Bank — is “just as bad” as Hamas, a genocidal jihadist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction and the murder of Jews.

In short, political considerations appear to be Netanyahu’s driving consideration — part of his longstanding pattern of making decisions that prioritize his political survival over long-term national interests.

And despite the monumental destruction in Gaza, Hamas will likely emerge badly bruised but with its power intact, having demonstrated its ability to challenge Israel and extract concessions. Critics of Netanyahu, both within his coalition and across the broader political spectrum, will seize on this deal as evidence of his failure to manage the conflict effectively, and as a capitulation to Hamas. And even as we experience relief and joy at the final enacting of a deal, that picture promises trouble ahead — for Netanyahu, and for all of us.

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