President Donald Trump is optimistic about his administration’s 21-point peace plan for Gaza, which has drawn some initial support from other countries in the region.
But getting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on board is another matter.
Trump said Friday that he thought the agreement, which calls for a permanent ceasefire and the return of all hostages, was “very close” — just as Netanyahu vowed to “finish the job” with Hamas in Gaza during a defiant speech to the United Nations General Assembly that was met with walkouts by several delegations.
On Monday, when the two leaders meet again at the White House, the U.S. president will try to close the gap with a Netanyahu who Trump believes is losing his grip on power, according to two senior administration officials granted anonymity to discuss the meeting.
“Bibi is on his own island. Not just from us, from his own government,” said one of the officials.
Even if Trump secures Netanyahu’s support on the day-after plan, there is hardly any active diplomacy between Hamas and Israel on ending the fighting.
Trump’s 21-point-plan, which has been shaped by Jared Kushner, former British prime minister Tony Blair and special envoy Steve Witkoff, calls for no Israeli annexation of the West Bank, an international trusteeship for Gaza with a nominal line of coordination to the Palestinian authority and an Arab and Muslim international security force, according to a person briefed on the plan.
The executive committee, which would also include Palestinian technocrats, would eventually bring the PA under its umbrella and reunite with the West Bank, after a period of time to be negotiated, the person said. It does not allow for the mass displacement of Palestinians and other details about relocations also need to be negotiated.
Israel has refused to work with the Palestinian Authority, saying it is a corrupt body that doesn’t want an independent state next to Israel.
Netanyahu’s decision earlier this month to strike at Hamas officials who were in Doha, Qatar, for peace talks, the official said, went against the advice of some high-ranking Israeli officials inside his own government. Not only did the strikes miss their targets, they deeply angered Qatari leaders and Trump, who had to apologize to a key regional ally.
“That’s a fuck-up. You can’t do shit like that,” the senior official continued. “If you do shit that risky, it has to succeed.”
Trump was “very heated” during his call with Netanyahu immediately after the strikes, according to one of the senior officials and a second person familiar with the call, and has hardened his resolve in pushing for a peace deal in the weeks since. On Tuesday during a meeting with Arab and Muslim leaders in New York, Trump promised that he wouldn’t allow Israel to seize the West Bank, which, unlike Gaza, is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas.
Trump confirmed those comments, which were first reported by POLITICO, in the Oval Office on Thursday and did not mince words.
“I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” he said. “There’s been enough. It’s time to stop now.”
The second senior administration official said that Trump’s emphatic articulation of his position on West Bank annexation was about “being very firm in public while leaving some room for negotiations in private.” The president’s growing frustration with Netanyahu aside, “he is going to try to get him to agree to some terms that then they could take back to [Hamas] and finally get something done.”
But, the official added, “it could also go off the rails.”
Trump has done little thus far to halt what is already an accelerating Israeli campaign in the West Bank that has seen the expansion of settlements and increasing violence aimed at driving Palestinians out. And Trump warned American allies against recognizing a Palestinian state, a largely symbolic gesture, stating that it was, in effect, “rewarding Hamas.”
The president is unique among major global democratic leaders in not treating Netanyahu as a global pariah. The Israeli prime minister was forced to avoid flying over mainland Europe en route to the U.S. last week due to fears he might be arrested by the International Criminal Court on suspicion of war crimes.
“President Trump fancies himself a peacemaker, but what he is tolerating jeopardizes what little possibility is left of creating a Palestinian state as well as expanding the Abraham Accords, a signature accomplishment of his first term,” said Richard Haass, a former diplomat and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio expressed the view that it may be impossible to end the war in Gaza, neglecting to point out that a principal reason the war is likely to continue is the absence of a serious, sustained U.S. diplomatic effort to bring it to an end.”
Trump has repeatedly backed Netanyahu’s mission to eradicate Hamas from Gaza in the nearly two-year conflict Israel launched after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, ignoring a U.N. report released earlier this month that concluded the ongoing decimation of Gaza is a genocide.
Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to visit the White House after Trump was inaugurated in January, and he reveled in the president’s audacious vision for forcibly relocating Palestinians and developing a post-war “riviera” of beachfront hotels and casinos in Gaza. But their relationship has deteriorated somewhat as Trump has strengthened his ties with several Arab partners and looked to play the role of peacemaker in the region and beyond.
