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Netanyahu discusses Gaza and tariffs with Trump at White House meeting
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met with Donald Trump on Monday for the second time since the US president’s return to office, marking the first effort by a foreign leader to negotiate a deal after Trump announced sweeping tariffs last week.Speaking alongside Trump in the Oval Office, Netanyahu said Israel would eliminate the trade deficit with the US. “We intend to do it very quickly,” he told reporters, adding that he believed Israel could “serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same”.Trump said the pair had a “great discussion” but did not indicate whether he would reduce the tariffs on Israeli goods. “Maybe not,” he said. “Don’t forget we help Israel a lot. We give Israel $4bn a year. That’s a lot.”Trump denied reports that he was considering a 90-day pause on his tariff rollout. “We’re not looking at that,” he told reporters. “We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and there are going to be fair deals.”Trump also announced that the US and Iran were beginning talks on Tehran’s nuclear program. “We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started. It’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” he told reporters. He warned Tehran would be “in great danger” if the talks collapse.Netanyahu expressed a cautious support for US-Iran talks but insisted Tehran must not have nuclear weapons. “If it can be done diplomatically … I think that would be a good thing,” he said. “But whatever happens, we must make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”The comments came in the Oval Office after Trump and Netanyahu held private talks. The White House canceled a joint press conference that was scheduled to take place afterward, without offering an immediate explanation.Netanyahu, announcing the last-minute meeting on Sunday, said he was visiting at the invitation of Trump to speak about efforts to release Israeli hostages from Gaza, as well as new US tariffs.The meeting came after the Trump administration announced his trade war last Wednesday with tariffs on the US’s trading partners, including a 17% tariff on Israeli goods.The US is Israel’s closest ally and largest single trading partner. Israel had hoped to avoid the new tariffs by moving to cancel its remaining tariffs on US imports a day before Trump’s announcement.Before his meeting with Trump, Netanyahu met with the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. He also met with the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer on Sunday night in Washington. The Israeli government described the latter meeting as “warm, friendly and productive”.During Netanyahu’s last visit in February, Trump shocked the world by proposing to take over the Gaza Strip, removing more than 2 million Palestinians and redeveloping the occupied territory as a “Riviera of the Middle East”, in effect endorsing the ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza.Since then, Israel has resumed its bombardment in Gaza, collapsing nearly two months of ceasefire with Hamas that had been brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar.Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials, taking the total death toll since the start of the war to more than 50,000. Israel has also halted all supplies of food, fuel and humanitarian aid into Gaza.Netanyahu’s visit to the US comes as he faces pressure at home to return to ceasefire negotiations and secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza.Netanyahu told reporters on Monday that he and Trump had discussed the US leader’s “bold” vision to move Palestinians from Gaza, and that he is working with the US on another deal to secure the release of additional hostages. “We’re working now on another deal, that we hope will succeed,” he said.Netanyahu also claimed that Israel is committed to “enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice to go wherever they want”. Last week, he said Israel was “seizing territory” and intended to “divide up” the Gaza Strip by building a new security corridor, inflaming fears that Israel intends to take permanent control of the strip when the war ends.Netanyahu arrived in Washington on Sunday night from Hungary, after a four-day official visit that marked the Israeli leader’s first visit to European soil since the international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, made it clear he would defy the court to host Netanyahu, and announced that he would take Hungary out of the ICC because it had become “political”. The US is not a member of the court. More
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Trump wants a Nobel peace prize. Here’s how he can earn one | Ken Roth
Donald Trump’s instinctive deference to the Israeli government is at odds with his self-image as an expert dealmaker. Much as it may seem laughable that the president wants the Nobel peace prize, his quest may be the best chance we have for securing any US government regard for the rights and lives of Palestinians in Gaza.Trump currently seems to endorse the strategy of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of trying to pummel Hamas into accepting defeat. To force Hamas to release its remaining hostages and to disband its diminished military force, Netanyahu has resumed Israel’s strategy of starving and bombing Palestinian civilians. In less than a week, about 600 Palestinians have already been killed.The second phase of the ceasefire was supposed to have led to the release of Hamas’s last hostages in return for the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and a permanent end to the fighting. Instead, the Israeli government has unilaterally changed the terms. It wants the hostages released and Hamas dismantled without committing to end the war. Hamas has rejected that one-sided ultimatum, evidently worried that Netanyahu would then resume attacking Palestinian civilians unimpeded.This is not an idle fear. The point of the renewed attacks may not be simply to wrest concessions from Hamas. The vast majority of the hostages freed so far have been released after negotiations rather than by military action, and most families of the hostages, prioritizing survival of their loved ones, want a negotiated solution.Rather, Israel’s aim may be to advance the project of expelling Palestinian civilians from Gaza, the longtime dream of the Israeli far right. Already the defense minister, Israel Katz, is threatening to seize and annex parts of Gaza, and Netanyahu is reportedly planning a new and larger ground invasion. Now that Trump has endorsed the forced permanent deportation of 2 million Palestinians from Gaza – a massive war crime and crime against humanity – Netanyahu may feel he has a green light to pursue that callous strategy.Tellingly, the far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir has rejoined Netanyahu’s governing coalition as police minister now that the temporary ceasefire, which he opposed, has ended. Head of the pro-settler, nationalist-religious Jewish Power party, Ben-Gvir has long been unabashed about his desire to “solve” the conflict in Gaza by getting rid of the Palestinians. And we should recognize that Gaza would most likely be just a prelude to the occupied West Bank.In these circumstances, a deal with Hamas seems unlikely. Why would Hamas capitulate if that would permanently separate the Palestinian people from their homeland?Netanyahu and Trump may calculate that overwhelming military force, if applied with sufficient brutality, would force Hamas’s hand. That has long been the Israeli strategy. Trump has even resumed delivery of the enormous 2,000lb bombs that Joe Biden had suspended because Israel was using them to indiscriminately decimate entire Palestinian neighborhoods.The international criminal court prosecutor has already hinted that this indiscriminate bombardment may be the next focus of his war-crime charges. Trump himself would be at risk of being charged for aiding and abetting these atrocities – an eventuality that would not lead to his immediate jailing but would severely limit his ability to travel to the 125 governments that as members of the ICC would have an obligation to arrest him. (Trump might ask Vladimir Putin about how it felt not to be able to attend the August 2023 Brics summit in South Africa for fear of arrest.)Hamas has so far shown no inclination to succumb to this war-crime strategy, and the surrounding Arab states have rejected becoming a party to another Nakba, the catastrophic forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948. The big question is whether Trump comes to recognize that a deal, not forced surrender, is the most likely way out of the current horrors in Gaza that he had vowed to end.For now, Trump’s deference to Israel seems firm, but one should never take anything for granted with Trump. If there is any constant to his rule, it is that his self-interest overcomes concern for others.That’s where the Nobel prize comes in. If Trump wants to be known as the master of the deal, it won’t be by underwriting more Israeli war crimes.Trump alone has the capacity to force Netanyahu to adopt a different approach. Despite Israel’s dependence on US military assistance, Netanyahu got away with ignoring Biden’s entreaties to curb the starvation and slaughter of Palestinian civilians because the Israeli leader knew that the Republican party had his back. But Trump has become the Republican party. If he pressures Israel, Netanyahu has nowhere to the right to turn.That is how Trump played a decisive role in securing the temporary ceasefire that began shortly before his 20 January inauguration. He could do the same thing now to force Netanyahu toward a more productive, less inhumane path.What might that look like? The best option remains a two-state solution – an Israeli and Palestinian state living in peace side-by-side. The main alternatives would be rejected by Israel (recognition of the “one-state reality” with equal rights for all) or most everyone else (the apartheid of endless occupation).The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has said that he will not normalize relations with Israel, which Trump craves, without a Palestinian state. Both the Saudis and the Emiratis have also insisted on a state as a condition for financing the rebuilding of Gaza.But wouldn’t a Nobel peace prize for Trump be preposterous? No more so than the one granted, however controversially, to Henry Kissinger. He had directed or approved war crimes or mass atrocities in Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Bangladesh and Chile, but the Nobel committee honored him nonetheless for concluding a peace deal with Vietnam and withdrawing US forces. A Trump pivot away from Netanyahu’s endless war would be no more surprising than Kissinger’s about-face.Admittedly, it would be foolhardy to bet on Trump becoming an advocate for a Palestinian state, but it is worth recognizing that his personal ambitions could lead him in that direction. It speaks to the topsy-turvy world of Trump that the Palestinians’ best hope in the face of an Israeli government that respects no legal bounds is to play up what it would take for Trump to secure his coveted Nobel. We must persuade Trump to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs, was recently published by Knopf and Allen Lane More
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The Guardian view on Israel breaking the ceasefire: destroying hope along with lives | Editorial
In shattering the two-month ceasefire that had brought a fragile peace and relief to Gaza, Israel has also smashed the faint hopes that a resolution might just remain within reach. This was one of the deadliest days since the early months of the conflict, sparked by the lethal Hamas raid of 7 October 2023. Israel says it was attacking “terror targets”, but health authorities in Gaza say that 174 children and 89 women were among the more than 400 dead. Evacuation orders issued by the military suggest that a renewed ground offensive may be on its way for traumatised and repeatedly displaced Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu warned that it was “only the beginning” and the military issued new evacuation orders to traumatised and repeatedly displaced Palestinians. Families of the remaining Israeli hostages are terrified and angry too, attacking the government for choosing to give up on them.Horror is piling upon horror. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since the war began, and the numbers grew even during the ceasefire, many due to Israel’s blocking of aid. The British foreign secretary, David Lammy, belatedly acknowledged that as a breach of international law on Monday – only for the prime minister’s spokesperson to rebuke him. A UN report last week said that Israel’s attacks on women’s healthcare in Gaza amounted to “genocidal acts”, and that security forces had used sexual violence as a weapon of war to “dominate and destroy the Palestinian people”. A previous UN commission found that “relentless and deliberate attacks” on medical personnel and facilities amounted to war crimes.Building on the ceasefire always looked difficult. Negotiations never seriously began for the second phase that was supposed to bring about a permanent cessation of hostilities, the release of all hostages, and the total withdrawal of Israeli forces – never mind consideration of the hypothetical third phase, Gaza’s reconstruction.Mr Netanyahu, who blames Hamas’s intransigence in refusing to release all the hostages now for the end of the ceasefire, is kept in power by endless conflict. The Israeli prime minister was due to testify in his corruption trial on Tuesday but cancelled, citing the renewed offensive. He needs support to pass a budget by the end of the month or his government will be dissolved. Resuming air strikes has brought back one of his far-right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and should prevent the other, Bezalel Smotrich, from jumping ship. Israelis challenging, as authoritarian, his attempts to dismiss his internal security agency chief, Ronen Bar, can be accused of undermining the patriotic cause. Yet most Israelis wanted to move to the second phase of the ceasefire, according to a recent survey. The testimony of returned hostages has refocused attention on the plight of those still held.The renewed attack has been widely and rightly condemned in Europe and the Arab world. But Israel, which was undeterred by Joe Biden’s feeble scoldings, is now dealing with a US president who told it to pause for a beat but is happy to give it the green light to resume and urge it to go further. Donald Trump has repeatedly promoted the forced displacement of Palestinians – another war crime. The US and Israel have reportedly contacted officials in Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland about resettling uprooted Palestinians. These plans are no more tolerable for being far-fetched. The Arab peace plan was a clear statement that there is a better alternative. But for Israel’s right, which will not tolerate Palestinian aspirations to statehood, the destruction of hope is not merely a result of this war, but the goal. It must not succeed.
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Netanyahu will never accept peace. Where will his perpetual war lead next? | Simon Tisdall
The first and last rule of Benjamin Netanyahu’s doctrine of perpetual warfare is brutally to the point: peace cannot and must not be allowed to last. As indiscriminate, deadly fire once again descends upon the defenceless people of Gaza, unleashed on the orders of Israel’s bellicose prime minister, an anguished cry is heard. Is the precious two-month-long ceasefire with Hamas definitively over? To which comes the dismaying answer: it barely matters. This truce, now shattering into a million pieces, was but a brief, deceptive pause in a war that never stops.It doesn’t stop because Netanyahu is sustained in office by the unceasing state of national emergency that he and his supporters have nurtured and prolonged since the 7 October 2023 terrorist attacks. The war doesn’t stop because Netanyahu’s overarching aim – the destruction of Palestinian hopes of nationhood – is doomed to fail. It does not stop because those, inside Israel and abroad, who criticise Israeli government actions face being dismissed and abused for supposedly acting not in good faith and out of alarm at the human toll, but from antisemitic motives.Most of all, perhaps, the war that the terrorists triggered 18 months ago continues, and threatens once more to expand, because Netanyahu and his far-right Jewish nationalist and ultra-religious partners have found in it a vehicle to pursue the larger goal of a greater Israel. They and their violent settler allies use it as an excuse to expand land grabs and intimidate Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank. New areas of Syria’s Golan Heights have been seized. Resettlement of Gaza itself is another stated objective.Perpetual warfare can only be sustained if the other “side” continues to fight. So degraded are Hamas’s forces, it almost seems unable to do so any longer. The lack of an immediate armed response to the Israeli strikes that began on Monday night speaks to relative weakness. And yet Hamas is not vanquished. Each time a hostage was handed over, its black-hooded fighters made a great show of militant defiance. As long as any credible, agreed “day after” plan is lacking – and absent a ground invasion and full-scale, long-term occupation – Hamas will remain in effective charge in Gaza. And so the war goes on.Netanyahu did not want the ceasefire in the first place and has constantly sought a breakdown he could blame on others. He only consented to stop shooting on 19 January under pressure from Donald Trump and his ubiquitous envoy, Steve Witkoff. Due to be inaugurated the following day, Trump was imperiously demanding an end to the conflict his predecessor, Joe Biden, failed to halt. Loth to rain on Trump’s parade, and eager to win favour, Netanyahu agreed, fingers crossed tightly behind his back.Yet even then, with more than 48,000 Palestinians dead, tens of thousands injured or traumatised and most of Gaza’s 2 million population homeless, Netanyahu was not ready to stop. He knew that far-right cabinet ministers would not tolerate peace for long. One, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had already resigned in protest. Others were threatening to do so, thereby potentially collapsing his government. He knew, though for him this has been a secondary consideration throughout, that many Israeli hostages remained in captivity – 59 at the last count, alive and dead.Netanyahu never seriously intended to honour the second phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to begin on 1 March and which calls for full Israeli military withdrawal. He blocked humanitarian aid; he cut water and electricity supplies; he delayed second-phase implementation and obstructed talks to get it back on track. He waged war by other means. And when these provocations failed, he insisted, in breach of the ceasefire deal, that Hamas unilaterally liberate more hostages while offering only limited prisoner releases and a temporary truce extension in return.Perpetual warfare, even when undeclared, is difficult to justify and Netanyahu, indicted for war crimes by the international criminal court and widely condemned in Europe and the Arab world, is desperately short of backers. His predicament has worsened of late. Accused of a growing authoritarianism, he is embroiled in a row over his bid to sack the Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar. A new corruption scandal involving Qatari money also swirls around him. In this context, a Gaza “distraction” may be considered timely.“Netanyahu is waging a holding action on every possible front – against early elections, against a state commission of inquiry [into the 7 October attacks], against a deal that would bring back the 59 remaining hostages, living and dead,” wrote Haaretz’s Amos Harel. “The prime minister is acting like someone who has nothing left to lose. Intensifying the battle to the point of chaos serves him.”With more than 400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, killed so far, and with Israel threatening continuing and expanding strikes, cries of anger, horror and dismay from the Palestinians, the UN, international aid agencies and foreign governments echo like ghostly laments across the devastated Gazan wasteland. They are as familiar as they are futile and disregarded.A far from chastened White House, proudly confirming complicity in the Israeli strikes, appears keen they continue. The January ceasefire process appears dead. Trump’s absurd plan for a Gaza Riviera is nowhere to be seen or heard now. Thwarted, he hits back vicariously, egging on Netanyahu. Yet it would be naive not to see a broader, schematic Trump connection. In recent days, he has rattled sabres in Iran’s face, demanding Tehran resume talks on curtailing its nuclear programme or face military action. At the same time, he launched huge airstrikes on Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen.In Trump’s simplistic, zero-sum world, it’s all the same deal. “As President Trump has made clear, Hamas, the Houthis, Iran – all those who seek to terrorise not just Israel but the US – will see a price to pay, and all hell will break loose,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said. Is Yemen an early warning? Is Trump moving to defend Israel against Iranian attack – a possibility relentlessly rehearsed by Netanyahu to justify his unending state of war? Or is Trump actually preparing the ground for an Israeli-US strike going the other way, as many in Tehran believe?Like some previous US presidents, and oblivious as ever to history, Trump believes he can remake the Middle East almost by an act of imperial will. But unlike Barack Obama, who dreamed in Cairo in 2009 of a democratic renaissance, Trump is remodelling by diktat, backed by the use or threat of brute force. Palestine is the benighted place in which Trump’s messiah complex and Netanyahu’s doctrine of perpetual war collide. Where next? And who now will help those who cannot help themselves?
Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator More
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The Guardian view on Israel’s aid blockade: pushing Palestinians toward catastrophe | Editorial
Israel’s decision to block aid to Gaza, as ceasefire talks falter, is a devastating blow to 2 million hungry, vulnerable civilians in the shattered territory. As the occupying power, Israel is legally bound to allow relief into Gaza under the Geneva convention. Denying it isn’t just inhumane – it’s a war crime. But Benjamin Netanyahu already faces an international criminal court arrest warrant for “starvation as a method of warfare” and “crimes against humanity”.Mr Netanyahu’s ability to flout international law is thanks to Donald Trump, who remains firmly in his corner. Washington now appears to accept starvation as an Israeli bargaining chip to pressure Hamas into accepting a US-devised truce extension – one that secures hostage exchanges while ensuring Israeli forces remain in Gaza. Hamas, which sparked the war with its 2023 massacre of Israeli civilians, insists Israel honour its commitment to a second phase of Gaza ceasefire negotiations – ending the fighting and withdrawing troops.Palestinians in Gaza are on the brink. Food is running out, hospitals are unable to function and families scavenge for clean water. Any further aid restrictions will turn desperation into catastrophe. It would be far better for a negotiated peace to be worked out that would see the Palestinians stay to rebuild their lives and for the remaining Israeli hostages to return home.After 15 months of war, and having achieved many of its declared objectives, Israel is no closer to peace in Gaza. That view is echoed by Scott Atran of Paris’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, who polled civilians in Gaza in January, shortly before the ceasefire came into effect. Prof Atran correctly argues that Israel lacks a political strategy for Palestine’s future and is only fuelling Palestinian anger.From the outset, the Trump administration has pursued an aggressive, unilateral approach to Gaza, aligning firmly with Israeli interests while disregarding Palestinian concerns. According to Nabeel Khoury, a former US state department official, the Abraham accords – Mr Trump’s flagship Middle East initiative – remain central to Washington’s evolving strategy, one that envisions Israeli territorial consolidation and unchallenged regional dominance.Mr Khoury has noted the US’s immediate priority is the wholesale removal of Palestinians from Gaza, followed, if conditions permit, by a gradual takeover of the West Bank. That vision coincides with the Washington visit of Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a pro-annexationist who has warned Mr Netanyahu that he would collapse the government if Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza under a truce.An Arab-led plan for Gaza’s post-war reconstruction – allowing its 2 million residents to remain – was rebuffed by the US and Israel. Yet it marked an important show of force: a pan-Arab coalition pushing back against the visible Netanyahu-Trump effort to erase Palestinian self-determination. In contrast, reports suggest the Trump administration is in direct talks with Hamas.If true, this would be a striking reversal of US policy. Engaging Hamas – once deemed untouchable – as a US negotiating partner might be pragmatic realism, an example of Trumpian transactional diplomacy or both. The UN estimated in 2019 that oil and natural gas resources in the occupied Palestinian territories could generate hundreds of billions of dollars for development. But Palestinian national aspirations are impossible under occupation.
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Steve Witkoff: from property developer to global spotlight as Trump’s tough-talking troubleshooter
With the first phase of the ceasefire nearing its end, an American property developer has emerged as a key figure in determining whether Gaza attains a more enduring peace or slips back into war.Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s typically idiosyncratic pick as special Middle East envoy, has also found his way into the midst of talks with Russia over Ukraine’s future, sitting opposite Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, instead of the official special envoy for the region, Keith Kellogg.On both portfolios, Witkoff is technically outranked by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, but every national capital knows by now that in Trump’s world, power flows through personal connection to the president. Rubio is a former bitter rival turned loyalist, brought into the administration for expediency’s sake. Witkoff and Trump go back nearly 40 years.That is what gives the 67-year-old businessman his clout. America’s interlocutors know he is the genial emissary of a volatile leader capable of swinging from fulsome support to public vituperation in a heartbeat, depending in large part on who has Trump’s ear.Witkoff demonstrated his influence in getting the ceasefire off the ground. On 10 January, Witkoff believed a breakthrough was close, after more than seven months of meandering, inconsequential talks. That Friday evening, he called Benjamin Netanyahu’s office from Doha, where he had been meeting Arab officials, and told the prime minister’s aides that he would be flying to Israel the next day. The aides explained that it would be Saturday and Netanyahu did not do business on the Sabbath, but would gladly meet the American envoy a few hours later, once night had fallen. Witkoff was having none of it and, according to an account in Haaretz newspaper, told them “in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him”.View image in fullscreenThe Israeli leader abandoned his Sabbath observance and received Witkoff in his office, where the envoy told him to agree to the ceasefire he had been ducking for so long.“The president has been a great friend of Israel,” Witkoff told Netanyahu, according to the Wall Street Journal, “and now it’s time to be a friend back.”Netanyahu folded immediately, allowing Witkoff to return to Doha to finalise the deal. The prime minister knew the American envoy was speaking for the president, whom he dared not anger.The bond of trust between Trump and Witkoff dates back to a chance encounter and a ham and cheese sandwich in a New York deli nearly four decades ago.Witkoff was born in the Bronx and raised on Long Island, the son of a women’s coat manufacturer. He qualified as a lawyer, and was working on an all-night property deal in 1986 in which Trump was involved.Witkoff had gone to the deli at 3am to get food for his team and Trump was there, hungry but without any cash in his pocket.“I ordered him a ham and Swiss,” Witkoff told a court in 2023, when he was testifying on his friend’s behalf in Trump’s trial for fraud. He did not run into Trump for another eight years, but the tycoon had remembered “the sandwich incident”, and a friendship grew.Trump persuaded Witkoff to graduate from property law to become a developer. Both men moved between New York and Florida, playing prodigious amounts of golf. Witkoff was with Trump on the latter’s West Palm Beach golf course in September, when a would-be assassin was arrested armed with a sniper rifle.Witkoff has also spoken emotionally about the solace he found talking to Trump when one of his sons, Andrew, died from an opioid overdose in 2011.Their long history has instilled a fierce personal loyalty in Witkoff, and in return he is treated almost as family by the president. It is a friendship that predates Trump’s embrace of Christian nationalism and the far right, so Witkoff does not bring the same ideological baggage to his diplomacy as other acolytes. His fealty is to Trump personally, not to Maga.His mostly pleasant and polite manner also stands out in the Trump crowd. Don Peebles, another developer who knows both men well, told the Journalthat Witkoff is “not the kind of negotiator that wants to see blood on the floor before getting the deal done”.After the primary race was over last year, Trump dispatched Witkoff to make peace with his defeated Republican rivals. And Witkoff worked on the Gaza ceasefire with his Biden administration counterpart, Brett McGurk, during the transition in a rare example of bipartisan cooperation.“Brett McGurk was great for the Biden administration,” he recalled. “We worked collaboratively. We were able to convince people that a hostage release was a good thing.”He credits Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with persuading him to take on the role of Middle East envoy, a job Kushner performed informally for the first Trump administration.Kushner, another property developer, claimed the job on the basis of his business connections with the Gulf monarchies, but Witkoff, a far warmer personality than his slightly robotic predecessor, has also developed relationships lower down the social scale, particularly with the hostages’ families.“I have a lot of empathy because I lost a child,” he said. “So I talk to these families who have lost children and they want their children’s bodies back as much as the families who have children who are alive.”Witkoff’s focus on the remaining 58 hostages (of which Israeli authorities believe 34 to be already dead) aligns him with majority Israeli opinion in seeking agreement on the second phase of the ceasefire, but on a collision course with Netanyahu and the far right.The next phase will involve the release of many more Palestinians serving life sentences in Israeli prisons and the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza strip. It would be a substantial step towards a lasting peace, which is why Netanyahu is set against it. The right wing of his coalition, which opposed the ceasefire in the first place, threatens to walk out if it moves forward to a second phase without Hamas first being obliterated and the strip opened up to Jewish settlement.View image in fullscreenWitkoff has been publicly insistent that the second phase must get under way, putting the priority of securing the release of the last hostages above anything else. “I think phase two is more difficult,” he said at a conference in Miami on Thursday. But he added: “Everybody is buying into this notion that releasing hostages is just a good thing. It just is something that’s important and ought to happen.”At the conference, organised by a Riyadh-based charitable institute, Witkoff said it was his contacts among the Saudi royals who got him involved in Russian talks.He explained it was the Saudis who “engineered” the release of an American prisoner held by Moscow, through their contacts to Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund.“They felt that there could be a compelling meeting in Russia that might lead to the release of Marc Fogel,” Witkoff said. “We got off the plane, not sure it was going to happen, but it did.”Fogel’s release on 12 February gave Trump an early public relations win, and was enough of a sweetener from Vladimir Putin, to secure a phone call with the new US president the same day that began US-Russian talks about Ukraine, in the absence of Ukrainian representation.Witkoff’s role cemented his standing in Trump’s mind as someone who could get results, leading to his current status as America’s chief troubleshooter. However, enduring peace in Ukraine and the Middle East will ultimately revolve around issues of justice and national sovereignty, terms which Witkoff avoids.When he went to see the devastation in Gaza for himself at the end of January, he said he could not imagine why any Palestinian would want to stay there. The coming weeks may not just test his sway as a Trump emissary, but also the limits of the real estate approach to diplomacy. More
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Trump’s Gaza takeover won’t happen. But it has already changed the face of Israeli politics | Yair Wallach
When President Donald Trump issued an ultimatum to Hamas last week to release all hostages by noon on 15 February, warning that otherwise “all hell [will] break loose”, the Israeli right was ecstatic. Here was a chance to finally move ahead with the complete occupation and annihilation of the Gaza Strip. The families of Israeli hostages were petrified about the prospect of the ceasefire collapsing, yet members of the ruling coalition called to kill the deal. “We have international support, give the order!” demanded the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.But the order never came. Hamas abided by the agreement and freed three hostages; Israel then released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Trump shrugged and said that it was Israel’s decision. His envoy, Steve Witkoff, who visited Israel on Sunday, signalled that the direction of travel is not towards resuming hostility. Instead, the parties must now move to “substantive” negotiations over the second phase of the ceasefire, he said, leading to peace.In the whirlwind of the last four weeks, it is difficult to make sense of Trump’s approach to the Gaza Strip. On the one hand, the president is widely credited for pushing the parties to a ceasefire agreement, raising hopes among Israelis who want to see a return of the hostages and an end to the war. On the other, Trump embraced the hard-right Israeli vision of ethnically cleansing Gaza, through a forced “relocation” of its 2.2 million Palestinian residents, establishing a US real estate development that would turn the Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.Some suspect this is merely a negotiation ploy that he hopes will pressure Arab states to take responsibility over Gaza, and to force Hamas into relinquishing control and influence. Even if this were the case, Trump’s rhetoric has already damaged international law. For the first time in many decades, the US has publicly proposed the forced displacement of millions of people as a geopolitical solution. As the genocide scholar Dirk Moses recently observed, this may mark the end of the postwar order, which defined such “transfers” of populations as war crimes that were banned by the Geneva conventions. While episodes of forced mass displacement have taken place in the second half of the 20th century, such as those in Yugoslavia or in Syria, these were never endorsed or championed by the White House.The legitimisation of ethnic cleansing could have a lasting impact in Palestine, Israel and beyond. Palestine’s history is instructive: in 1937, the Palestine Royal Commission administered by Britain proposed the forced displacement of over 200,000 Palestinians from the Galilee as part of its partition plan. Mainstream Zionist leaders had long ruled out transfers on this scale as unrealistic. But British backing for this idea gave it legitimacy. David Ben-Gurion, then the leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Palestine, wrote in his diary: “This is a possibility we did not dream of; that we could not dream of in our wildest imagination.”Ben-Gurion understood that the details of the partition plan mattered far less than the principle of forced mass displacement. In the aftermath of the second world war, “population exchanges” were explicitly or tacitly accepted by the great powers as a necessary evil. Eleven years after the royal commission, Ben-Gurion oversaw the permanent expulsion and dispossession of two-thirds of Palestinians, in the Nakba of 1948.We can already see the effect of Trump’s rhetoric on Israeli society. Since October 2023, rightwing ministers and political activists have been calling for a euphemistic “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza, and yet Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had sought to keep a safe distance from such ideas. The idea of forced displacement was broadly considered so beyond the pale that mainstream pollsters did not even pose the question in their Israeli public opinion surveys.Yet shortly after his return from Washington DC, a gleeful Netanyahu lauded Trump’s “revolutionary vision for the day after Hamas”. “We see eye-to-eye with the US administration on … all our war goals”, he told the Knesset. The political commentator and radio host Amit Segal, who has been accused of serving as Netanyahu’s mouthpiece, quoted the Psalms verse: “We were like them that dream.” The verse refers to the return of Jews to Zion; now it was being used to celebrate the looming expulsion of Palestinians from the country.Strikingly, most centrist Israeli parties welcomed the plan. The former defence minister Benny Gantz commended Trump for his “creative, original and interesting thinking”. An opinion poll found that no less than 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the plan in principle; 52% thought it was feasible. Only 3% of Israeli Jews rejected the plan as “unacceptable and immoral”.Yet even if many Israelis favourably view the fantasy plan of a depopulated Gaza, there’s no appetite for the total war that would be required to materialise that plan. Opinion polls showed that Israelis are resolutely opposed to an immediate return to hostilities. After 16 months of war, there is widespread fatigue. The malnourished condition of the hostages that returned most recently, and the reports of torture they faced, was deeply alarming. Two-thirds of Israelis believe the ceasefire agreement should be upheld, and the safe return of the hostages should take priority.We can expect further ultimatums and confusion for the foreseeable future. Even if an immediate return to war has been averted, the risk of one is greater than ever. Trump has let the genie of mass expulsion out of the bottle. The ethnic cleansing of Gaza would require carnage and atrocities even beyond the horrifying scale of the last 17 months. Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan are unlikely to survive, and the reverberations would be felt throughout the region. This is a scenario that would not only mean the likely death of the hostages, but an increasingly theocratic Jewish republic premised upon destruction and conquest. If Israel heads down this route, it will not only be destroying Palestinians in Gaza, but condemning itself to an ever escalating war.
Yair Wallach is a reader in Israeli studies and head of the Centre for Jewish Studies at Soas University of London
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- in US Politics
Netanyahu seeks to draw Trump into future attack on Iranian nuclear sites
Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that, with Donald Trump’s support, his government will “finish the job” of neutralising the threat from Iran, amid US reports that Israel is considering airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites in the coming few months.Trump has said he would prefer to make a deal with Tehran, but also made clear that he was considering US military action if talks failed, and his administration has laid down an early maximalist demand: Iranian abandonment of its entire nuclear programme.“All options are on the table,” the US national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told Fox News on Sunday. The new administration will only talk to Iran, Waltz added, if “they want to give up their entire programme and not play games as we’ve seen Iran do in the past in prior negotiations”.Earlier this month, Trump offered the Iranian regime a stark choice.“I would like a deal done with Iran on non-nuclear,” he told the New York Post. “I would prefer that to bombing the hell out of it.”In politics as in business, Trump’s vaunted “art of the deal” has relied heavily on bluster and threats, but analysts question how well that will work with Tehran. They also warn that the window for a diplomatic resolution to the standoff with Tehran will get narrower with each passing month, as Iranian nuclear capabilities progress, and Netanyahu works to persuade Trump to participate in joint strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities while it is at its most vulnerable.Israel’s prime minister has tried and failed to convince successive US administrations to take part in military action against Iran, including Trump’s. During his first term in the White House, Trump declined, in line with his aim of keeping the US out of foreign wars.In 2018, however, Trump did fulfil another Netanyahu request, withdrawing the US from a three-year-old multilateral agreement that had constrained Iran’s programme in return for sanctions relief. Since then, Iran has pushed forward with nuclear development and now produces increasing amounts of 60%-enriched uranium, which means it is a small technical step away from the production of weapons-grade fissile material.Tehran insists it has no intention of making a nuclear weapon and remains a member of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could upend that policy if Iran’s nuclear sites came under threat.Israel and Iran launched a series of tit-for-tat attacks on each other last year, culminating in substantial Israeli airstrikes on 25 October that inflicted significant damage on Iran’s air defences.That damage, combined with Israel’s crippling campaign over the past year against Iran’s most important ally in the region, Hezbollah, has left Iran in its most militarily vulnerable state for decades.View image in fullscreenStanding alongside the new US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Sunday, Netanyahu made clear he wanted to take advantage of that vulnerability.“Over the last 16 months, Israel has dealt a mighty blow to Iran’s terror axis. Under the strong leadership of President Trump, and with your unflinching support, I have no doubt that we can and will finish the job,” he said.US intelligence agencies have been briefing reporters over the past week that they believe Israel is likely to attack Iranian nuclear sites in the first half of 2025. But the intelligence assessments also underlined Israeli reliance on US support in the form of aerial refuelling, intelligence and reconnaissance. US officials also said such strikes would, at most, set back Iran’s programme by a few months, and could trigger Tehran’s decision to take the decisive step towards making weapons-grade uranium.Whatever the misgivings in Washington, the Trump administration approved the sale earlier this month of guidance kits for bunker-busting BLU-109 bombs, likely to be essential in inflicting damage on Iran’s most deeply buried enrichment plant at Fordow.Netanyahu was the first foreign visitor to be invited to the White House after Trump’s re-election, and according to the Washington Post, the two leaders discussed “several possible levels of American backing, ranging from active military support for a kinetic strike – such as intelligence, refuelling or other assistance – to more limited political backing for a coercive ultimatum”.Raz Zimmt, a research fellow and Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said there was another clock ticking on diplomacy with Iran. Under the 2015 nuclear agreement, its remaining signatories, including the UK, France and Germany, can trigger a “snap back” of all international sanctions on Iran, but that leverage expires in October this year, giving European capitals the options of “use it or lose it”. If the mechanism is triggered, it could lead to a further escalation, Zimmt said.“I think there is a very limited diplomatic window of opportunity until August or September, to reach some kind of settlement between Iran and the US,” he said. “If there is no agreement by then … I think it will be much easier for Netanyahu to get not just a green light [from Washington] but perhaps some kind of military capabilities which will make it easier for Israel to achieve a broader and more effective impact.”Netanyahu regularly describes Trump as the “best friend” Israel ever had in the White House, a description echoed by Rubio and other administration officials, but that friendship will be put to a decisive test as Israel continues to press the case for an attack on Iran.Ariane Tabatabai, a Pentagon policy adviser in the Biden administration, said it would fuel “tension between the ‘restraint’ camp in the administration and the more traditional Republicans who are more inclined toward a more forceful approach to Iran”.“It’s not clear yet in these early days which group will have more influence in the inter-agency process and ultimately drive policy, but that’ll be a factor as well.” Tabatabai said.Trump prides himself in keeping the US out of foreign wars, but he has shown himself ready to take military action against Tehran, ordering the assassination by drone of a Revolutionary Guards commander, Qassem Suleimani, in Baghdad in January 2020.Saudi Arabia is reportedly offering to mediate to avoid a conflagration, but even if Trump wanted to hammer out a deal, argued Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, Trump’s browbeating style of negotiation could easily backfire when it came to Tehran.“The Trump style is he goes in heavy,” Vatanka said. “But Ali Khamenei has to be extremely careful how he responds to Trump so his personal image is not damaged.”“Iran has been weakened in the region – no doubt about it – but they still claim to be leading proponents of the Islamic cause who stand up to western bullying,” he added. “So what might work with certain countries in Europe or in Latin America will not necessarily work with the Iranian regime.” More
