Netanyahu tries to sell Trump’s Gaza peace plan to a skeptical right wing

TEL AVIV - Hours after he offered his support for President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire proposal at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted an Instagram video in Hebrew to emphasize a few points for the Israeli audience.

If the deal were signed, Hamas would release all Israeli hostages while the Israel Defense Forces remained in most of Gaza, Netanyahu stressed Monday. Those who had urged him to withdraw the military - and thus allow Hamas to rebuild - were “dead wrong,” he said: “No way, that’s not happening.”

“And President Trump added that if Hamas refuses, he will give Israel full backing to complete the military operation and eliminate them,” Netanyahu said. He added that he will “not agree” to a Palestinian state - despite Trump’s proposal calling for a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”

In emphasizing the conditions for Israel’s military withdrawal and raising the possibility of resuming the campaign, Netanyahu appeared to be signaling to his right-wing allies that the ceasefire urged by Trump would not be as ironclad or unfavorable as they fear. Netanyahu’s reluctance to fully withdraw his troops, combined with Hamas’s reluctance to disarm, may result in a fragile deal, regional officials and analysts say.

“There is a lot of gray area in the deal and this is how Netanyahu wanted it,” said Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “He can tell the right wing he will never [fully withdraw], and he can show Hamas is the one saying no and he can continue the war.”

Egyptian and Qatari mediators presented the U.S. proposal to Hamas and the group affirmed that it is “studying the proposal with both objectivity and positivity,” Egyptian state television reported, citing an Egyptian security official. Hamas officials have not commented on the proposed plan.

Many Israelis - the majority of whom have called for a deal to end the war in exchange for the hostages’ release - and Arab countries celebrated the White House proposal. In a joint statement, Arab and Muslim countries praised Trump’s offer and noted that it would prevent the displacement of the Palestinian people from Gaza, advance a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace and prevent the annexation of the West Bank.

Palestinian Authority Deputy President Hussein al-Sheikh praised Trump’s efforts Tuesday, saying he reaffirmed the need to end the war and reach a “just peace based on a two-state solution.”

But parts of the Netanyahu government’s base began to push back. The powerful Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has agitated for Israel to occupy Gaza and expel Palestinians, said Tuesday that the proposed truce would amount to a “historic, missed opportunity” and blamed Netanyahu and the Israeli military for not moving faster to conquer Gaza. But the government will have to consider the deal, he said, given the tide of international pressure building against the Gaza campaign.

“Is there no choice, and is this the maximum that can be achieved right now?” Smotrich said in a statement on X. “This will also end in tears. Our children will be forced to fight in Gaza again.”

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said he supported the plan but worried that there were “holes” that could be exploited to resume hostilities. “Netanyahu is a seasoned and exhausting expert in saying ‘yes, but,’” Lapid said. “Usually he says the ‘yes’ in Washington, standing in front of cameras at the White House, feeling like a groundbreaking statesman, and the ‘but’ when he returns home and the ‘base’ reminds him who’s boss.”

An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, said that Netanyahu fears crossing Trump and will not reject his proposal, but that there is still room to discuss the timing and terms of the Israeli military withdrawal by tying it to the condition of Hamas’s disarmament. Israel’s powerful settler wing has been deeply alarmed by the proposal and the fact that Trump publicly ruled out any annexation of the West Bank, and Netanyahu is likely to have to make concessions to them to relieve the extreme pressure from his right flank, the official added.

Although Israel had concerns with the initial drafts of the deal, in a lengthy meeting with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Netanyahu successfully negotiated to allow Israel to keep forces in a security perimeter around Gaza and to maintain security responsibility over the entire strip, said a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the diplomatic talks.

Although a version of Trump’s proposal obtained by The Washington Post over the weekend showed that the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority - which Netanyahu and his allies have condemned for more than a decade as an alleged “terrorist state” - would eventually govern Gaza, Netanyahu, who has resisted such an outcome, also removed that language.

“On the one hand, everybody wants to see an end to the genocide and that’s why the PA and all the Arab countries lined up to support the deal,” said Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian peace negotiator. “But on the other hand, it’s a whole package that gives Israel perpetual control of the Gaza Strip and an Israeli veto. What’s going to guarantee that Israel will pull back to any of those lines? Who will force them to pull out?”