Bibi and Donald Eat Dinner at the White House
Are we on the verge of a major breakthrough or just more of the same? What to watch for next.
No Trump-Netanyahu meeting is complete without a cringey moment in front of the press, and last night’s dinner was no exception. Lets just say that Donald Trump’s continued quest for a Nobel Peace Prize did not receive a major boost from the nominating letter that Benjamin Netanyahu – a man under indictment at the International Criminal Court – handed the President last night in front of the press. But theatrics aside, what did this Netanyahu visit to Washington accomplish and where do we go from here? There is another meeting being scheduled for this evening, and maybe there will be some big news, but right now the outcome already looks pretty set.
There has been a lot of hype over the past week that in the aftermath of the war with Iran, now is the moment to end the war in Gaza and cut multiple regional deals that convert the military progress Israel has made over the past 21 months into political victory. Ending the war in Gaza is certainly the best option for Israeli society, which suffered another terrible incident yesterday with five more soldiers killed and fourteen wounded. Israelis are feeling triumphant after the successful military campaign against Iran, but also exhausted after two very intense weeks spent in shelters absorbing ballistic missile attacks and coming after what has been a grueling 21 months in the aftermath of October 7th. Ending the war is obviously what is also best for Palestinian civilians who are still suffering very high casualties from the combination of daily strikes and incidents at the chaotic and dysfunctional food distribution sites set up by the poorly named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
So is this visit a key milestone on the way to wrapping up the war? Or just another play by Netanyahu to kick the can down the road? It could end up being both. We just don’t know yet.
To understand where things may go, let's try to get inside Netanyahu’s and Trump’s heads and understand how they are approaching the current moment. Two things to remember about Netanyahu. First, he always leaves himself multiple options and pathways not making up his mind until he absolutely has to. Second, his greatest skill and first priority has always been to keep his governing coalition together, unless he thinks the time is right to go for elections on the strongest leg possible. And so what we can assume is that Bibi is certainly keeping open the possibility of ending the war and consolidating regional gains, especially if he can do it in a way that is politically advantageous. But that’s not his only option right now.
As for Trump. He wants a deal to end the war in Gaza and has been talking about deals in the Middle East since he came back into office. But he is also impatient, distractible, and doesn’t bother with the details. So while he likely pushed Netanyahu on ending the war, nobody knows precisely where he will be next week let alone in two months. When these two men last met in April, Trump publicly declared he’d pursue diplomacy with Iran, only to be relatively easily convinced two months later to join a military attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
Step 1: A Partial Deal
It is clear that Netanyahu will not offer an immediate big bold move to end the war in exchange for all of the hostages. It’s against his nature of leaving himself options and putting off decisions and it’s too risky politically. Netanyahu got a bit of a political boost from the Iran war, but not as much as he had hoped, and if Israel were to have elections today his coalition would still be quite far behind in the polls. The risk of cutting a deal to end the war, which would trigger Ben Gvir and Smotrich leaving the government and lead to new elections, is too high for him.
But what is also clear is that Trump is hyper-focused in the aftermath of the war with Iran on getting deals. So Bibi needs to offer something. It appears that Netanyahu has convinced Trump and Witkoff that another temporary ceasefire is the best way to move forward and has avoided having Trump put intense pressure on him for the moment to immediately end the war as part of a comprehensive agreement.
So, we are back to partial deals in this case a proposed 60 day truce where Israel receives ten living hostages and eighteen deceased in exchange for a surge in humanitarian assistance into Gaza, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and a commitment to negotiate on an end to the war. It is unclear if this will be enough for Hamas to accept. The fact that Witkoff is on his way back to Qatar for negotiations is a good sign. But for Hamas ending the war is the most important criteria of any deal, and they continue to reject this notion of negotiating a sustainable end to the fighting during the ceasefire and want guarantees now. It doesn’t help that the last time we had a hostage deal back in January, part of the deal was a commitment by Israel to engage in serious negotiations on ending the war during the pause. Netanyahu never followed through on that part of the agreement and so Hamas might be unwilling to make the same deal again and spend down the one piece of negotiating leverage it has by releasing more of the hostages.
And so for Bibi at this point there are two outcomes. Maybe Hamas takes the deal under renewed pressure in which case he gets hostages out without ending the war and still leaves himself options. Or, if Hamas does not take the deal, Bibi convinces Trump that it is Hamas’s fault and the war just continues. Either way, Netanyahu remains in power.
Step 2: Ending the War
If we get a 60 day ceasefire what happens next? Again, Netanyahu will look to leave himself options and try to put himself in the best possible political position. Israel will have to go to elections at some point before November 2026, and so he might calculate that getting a popular deal that brings all of the hostages home in exchange for an end to the war is the best way to pivot from his current strategy of holding together his far right wing coalition, to instead going to elections with the broadest possible support in the country. This would be very similar to a moment in US politics when Presidential candidates pivot from winning a primary to contesting a general election. If Netanyahu decides to go in this direction, he will spend the 60 day ceasefire attempting to consolidate as many diplomatic and political victories as possible as part of a deal. Deals he might try for include on the positive end:
A non-aggression pact with Syria that becomes the first step to an eventual peace and keeps the Golan Heights under Israeli control;
Normalization agreements with some Arab or Muslim states. The most significant would be Saudi Arabia, but if that is not on the table there are also other potential lesser options; and
An Iran nuclear agreement that meets Israeli terms for no domestic uranium enrichment (Feels like a major stretch).
On the negative side of the ledger, he may seek U.S. support for annexation of some parts of the West Bank as part of a deal to end the war in Gaza. Such a move would be popular with Netanyahu’s base and could even allow him to hold his far right coalition together while ending the war. However, it would not only be a catastrophic move against Palestinian rights and Israel’s standing in the world, but would be very hard to pull off while also pushing for normalization with Gulf States.
For Netanyahu, the beauty of this play is that he does not need to cut all of these deals. Even one or two may be enough. And if it works he goes to elections on the strongest footing possible. If it doesn’t work, then he’s bought himself 60 days. During that time the Knesset will be out of session on summer recess dramatically reducing the chance the government will fall. Meanwhile 60 days is forever for Trump, who may grow impatient and bored and move on to other things. And so in 60 days, if none of this has worked, Netanyahu can just revert to form, restart the war and keep looking for more options while maintaining his hold on power.