What now? Netanyahu's future is at stake.
Israel's future remains dependent on the actions of the international community. It is clear that the Israelis do not want to withdraw from the Palestinian territories under any circumstances, and that the agreement on the Gaza Strip will not change the Jewish state's intentions, no matter how many regional negotiations Donald Trump pushes in the coming months or years. The problem with resolving the eternal crisis with the Palestinians is that today there is a clear and broad majority within the Israeli political class that agrees with Benjamin Netanyahu on this particular issue. Because in the opposition, there are parties as opposed to an agreement as the Prime Minister, who has reiterated this publicly this week.
Everything remains similar to what it was before October 7th two years ago., when Hamas launched its deadly attack on the south of the country, killing more than 1,200 people. For many Israelis, the story began that day, but the problems go way back, and for decades Israel has done nothing to resolve the conflict, consolidating employment year after year.
If there is no strong pressure from the international community, nothing good will happen. And it must be direct pressure, like the one that existed with the apartheid Republic of South Africa. An Israeli diplomat told me some time ago that two years after the international boycott of South Africa began, the regime quickly crumbled like a block of wet sugar.
The Gaza crisis, now in a new phase, requires the international community to begin applying symbolic sanctions. It should be the beginning of a decisive phase, not the merely contemplative one we're used to, starting with penalties at Eurovision and UEFA, and continuing with more robust political and economic sanctions. Emmanuel Macron's initiative to promote the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza is on the right path. However, we will have to wait and see how the idea evolves. Clearly, Israel and the United States will try to dismantle it from the outset, and they have sufficient resources to do so. In this sense, Washington has become a political satellite of Tel Aviv.
Trump makes no bones about it.
President Trump already demonstrated who he identifies with in his first term, and now he has confirmed it. His special envoys for conflict resolution, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are two American Jews who are more Zionist than Netanyahu. This confirms that Trump's vision is unbalanced, making it difficult to address the problems. As for Netanyahu's future, everything indicates that he wants to remain in office indefinitely and run in the next elections, which will likely take place in September 2026, if not brought forward. Netanyahu boasts of having changed the Middle East, but he also wants to change Israel from within, to create a very different country from the one he received, and he is working in that direction.
Netanyahu wants to prevent the creation of a state commission, one supervised by the Supreme Court, to investigate the grave errors that led to the October 7 catastrophe. Instead, Netanyahu wants a government commission that he can control. He also needs to somehow block the trial into his alleged corruption. It won't be a simple matter. But the prime minister, who turns 76 next week, is showing every day that he doesn't want to abandon active politics.