Trump 'Forced Netanyahu to Accept a Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected' - Israeli Media

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Jan. 14, 2025

President-elect Donald Trump reportedly "forced" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a peace deal that will end the Jewish state's war on Gaza and leave Hamas in power.

From Haaretz, "Trump's Mideast Envoy Forced Netanyahu to Accept a Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected":
Last Friday evening, Steven Witkoff, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, called from Qatar to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's aides that he would be coming to Israel the following afternoon. The aides politely explained that was in the middle of the Sabbath but that the prime minister would gladly meet him Saturday night.

Witkoff's blunt reaction took them by surprise. He explained to them in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him. His message was loud and clear. Thus in an unusual departure from official practice, the prime minister showed up at his office for an official meeting with Witkoff, who then returned to Qatar to seal the deal.

A week before Trump's inauguration, Jerusalem already sees a change in the rules of the game that has broken the deadlock in the hostage negotiations. Unusually, the outgoing Biden administration has let Witkoff lead the process, on the grounds that any obligations the United States undertakes will be incumbent on Trump, not on Biden.

Witkoff is a Jewish real estate investor and developer who is close to Trump. He doesn't have the background of the kind of people who usually fill diplomatic roles. "Witkoff isn't a diplomat. He doesn't talk like a diplomat, he has no interest in diplomatic manners and diplomatic protocols," says a senior Israeli diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He's a businessman who wants to reach a deal quickly and charges ahead unusually aggressively."

In fact, Witkoff has forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over the past half year. Hamas has not budged from its position that the hostages' freedom must be conditioned on the release of Palestinian prisoners (the easy part) and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (the hard one). Netanyahu rejected this condition and thus was born the partial deal proposed by Egypt.
I assumed last week that Trump had shared that video of Jeffrey Sachs calling Netanyahu a "deep, dark son of a bitch" inadvertently but it's looking like that was actually a shot across the bow.

One might even call it "4D chess" (for real this time!)!



Israel's far-right is livid.

Jewish supremacist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich -- an explicit supporter of Palestinian genocide who is part of Netanyahu's coalition -- called the deal a "catastrophe for Israel's national security."

"We will not be part of a surrender deal that would include releasing terrorists, stopping the war and dissolving the achievements that were bought with much blood, and abandoning many hostages," Smotrich said on X.

"This is the time to continue with all our might, to occupy and cleanse the entire Strip, to finally take control of humanitarian aid from Hamas, and to open the gates of hell on Gaza until Hamas surrenders completely and all the hostages are returned."






Ryan Grim commented on X that Biden could have forced Netanyahu to accept the same deal at any time.

"This deal has been available at least since May, arguably since last November after the first prisoner exchange," Grim said. "Every hostage who has died since, every Palestinian killed or who died of malnutrition or a treatable disease, is a direct result of Biden’s refusal to force the deal. I hope he’s cognizant enough to understand how fully he has been exposed (by Donald Trump!!) as a mass murdering fanatic."

Another possibility is that Netanyahu figured it would be prudent to give Trump this win now and help him boost his approval rating as he takes office in the hope of securing more for Israel later.



It's a lot easier for Israel to get what it wants out of Trump if he takes office with a positive approval rating and his numbers have been struggling due to his Israel First appointments and Elon Musk revealing his plans to replace Americans "legally" with endless immigrants from India.

Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter, Facebook, Gab, Minds and Telegram.












All original InformationLiberation articles CC 4.0



About - Privacy Policy