US Official to Netanyahu: “Don’t Fuck Up the Ceasefire or Trump Will Fuck You”

What a difference a day makes!  The original title of this post was “The Slow, Painful Death of the Gaza Ceasefire.”  But the rumors of its death were premature, as Mark Twain  once said. Trump has surprised me, breathing new life into his 20 point peace deal as it appeared to be expiring.

After Palestinian fighters killed two senior IDF officers, Netanyahu rained hellfire on Gaza with 100 warplane sorties and 153 tons of munitions (which he boasted about). He closed all the humanitarian aid crossings in retaliation (even though there is no provision in the agreement for a party to unilaterally change the terms or punish the opposing party).

These were clear indications he intended to abrogate the ceasefire under the guise of Hamas’s attack and its purported refusal to release the remaining bodies of Israeli hostages.  Netanyahu has never met a ceasefire he didn’t break. This would be no exception.  But he didn’t count on one thing: Trump stood in his way and refused to budge.

Trump’s negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner read Netanyahu the riot act and demanded he reopen the crossings and cease further military activity.  Within two hours of ordering their closing, he backed down.

Although only two of the crossings are now open, and the amount of humanitarian supplies entering has been reduced to a trickle. Less than 100 trucks are entering the enclave daily. 600 are needed to maintain basic needs there. Netanyahu clearly is gradually shutting the spigot in order to constrict Palestinian lives like the coiling of a boa constrictor around its prey.  This is a violation of the deal, which calls for opening all crossings and permitting the free flow of aid.

Now that most of the Israeli bodies have been returned (only 13 remain unaccounted for), stage two of the ceasefire should come into effect.  It calls for a further withdrawal (it currently holds 53% of Gaza territory) of Israeli forces, the introduction of an international force to provide security, the approval of a Palestinian governance body, and the disarming of Hamas. Netanyahu has not agreed to a troop withdrawal nor appointment of a Palestinian administration.  He has said he’s prepared for Arab states to provide security, but has called the inclusion of Turkish troops, a “red line.”  Turkey played an instrumental role persuading Hamas to agree to the ceasefire.  It remains to be seen whether the US will push the Israeli leader to agree to including them in the security force.

Annexation: a new threat

Then a new threat emerged.  A key provision of the deal is a prohibition against Israeli annexation of the West Bank.  This is a critical issue for the Arab states who joined Trump and signed on to his plan, who wish to see a Palestinian state result from the process.

The Israel ruling coalition includes several Judeo-Nazi parties who are adamantly opposed to any peace deal.  One of their MKs advanced a bill calling for annexation.  Though it seems like a bit of theater, Trump’s team went into overdrive.  A continuous stream of senior US officials landed in Tel Aviv, including Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio.  Their message was clear: don’t mess with the US.  Stop the shenanigans and get down to the matter at hand.  The ceasefire must hold and you must not do anything to sabotage it.  The Knesset result was a tepid 25-24 vote in favor, with over half the members abstaining.  After Vance called the bill “stupid,” even Netanyahu was forced to condemn it and promise it would not pass.

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid quotes a senior US official currently in Israel who issued a stark, brutal warning to Netanyahu. Global media has only reported the most salacious final sentence of this report. But I’ve done a more extensive translation since it covers other salient issues:

The senior official told me that the main sense that Vice President Vance got from his visit in Israel is that the country is currently ungoverned.  Otherwise, the passage of the annexation bill would never have happened.

An Israeli official tells me that Netanyahu was warned several days ago about the impression the passage of the bill gave in the US and Arab world. He did nothing to stop the vote.

The Americans are not only concerned about annexation but also by a series of things which happened just in the past day.  Smotrich’s statement [“If Saudi Arabia tells us ‘normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state,’ friends — no thank you. Keep riding camels in the desert in Saudi Arabia] shocked [the Americans] not only because of the racism but because Israel is seeking to establish relations with Saudi Arabia. This surely isn’t the way to do it.

The Americans have also noted a series of articles in Israeli media attacking Turkiye and the plan to station Turkish troops in Gaza [as part of the international security force]. This was supposed to be an issue discussed behind closed doors. The Americans got calls from Turkey asking why this issue has been disseminated publicly.

The American official said that the combination of all of these things raises the deep fear in the US that the behavior of the Israeli government will destroy the Gaza agreement. The same official offered the following sharp rebuke: “Netanyahu is walking a fine line with Trump. If he continues like this, he will fuck up the ceasefire. If he fucks up the ceasefire, Trump will fuck him.”

Notably, Netanyahu told Israeli media that stationing Turkish forces in Gaza was a “red line” that would never be crossed. Evidently, he leaked the story to the media so he could denounce it, most likely to score points with the Judeo-Nazi members of his ruling coalition.

Even in an Administration known for its unrestrained vulgarity, this indicates how scornful are Trump’s views of Netanyahu and how constrained the latter is. The US president is putting the screws to him. And for someone like me who has for decades watched with disgust as US presidents have permitted him to weasel out of his commitments, it’s a beautiful thing to see. There will be no more braggadocio about “wrapping America around my little finger” as he said in the past. That is over and done.

For the time being, the Knesset disaster was averted.  But it’s clear that Netanyahu supports annexation.  The full Knesset even passed a bill calling for it.  Neither he nor Israel’s Judeo-Taliban politicians give up easily or at all.  They beat a tactical retreat, but then plot how to advance and secure their goal.  They never stop. It’s a toss-up whether Israel will officially annex Palestinian territory, but I would not want to bet against it.

The right-wing messianist commitment to its goal is ironclad.  One of its key provisions is territorial domination. It views Christians and Muslims as defilers of a land promised to Jews by God.  To attain the divine mandate, the land must be purified of its “alien” presence:

The dream for many extremist settlers – and ministers – is that the next stage of this process will prove impossible to resolve and the yellow line will indeed become the de facto border, opening the way to new settlements on Gazan land. Some hardliners would like Israel to annex the whole of the Gaza Strip.

While Netanyahu may have failed this time, his modus operandi is to probe enemies, allies, and agreements for weaknesses. Then to exploit them to extract maximum advantage.  He believed he could violate the terms because no one would stand in the way. He wagered that Trump, ever erratic and distracted, would lose interest in Gaza.

So he signed an agreement whose vague terms he judged were easy manipulate in his favor.  But Trump put a crimp in his plans.  Netanyahu may be an expert conniver who tells his interlocutor what he wants to hear, then promptly ignores whatever he agreed to. But he is a piker compared to the US president, who’s made a career out of grifting, deceit, lying and conniving.  Israel’s leader has more than met his match.

Returning to the annexation issue, it is a distraction.  Israel has annexed the West Bank in all but name.  It has 1-million settlers squatting there in hundreds of settlements. Their footprint has cut off territorial contiguity of Palestinian towns and denied any possibility of statehood.  Scores of villages and thousands of residents have been expelled from their homes by settler vigilante thugs.  The IDF not only doesn’t stop the mayhem, it facilitates it and even participates in it.

Therefore, the entire issue of annexation is a distraction.  The Knesset vote is right-wing pandering.  Throwing red meat to its constituency.  These parties have already succeeded in their mission to eradicate any possibility of a Palestinian state.  Without forced withdrawal of these settlers and settlements there can be none.  Such a withdrawal will never happen.

Trump doesn’t trust Bibi to be true to his word.  Thus, he has forced him to accept something once thought impossible: the stationing of US combat troops on Israeli soil.  A technical team of 200 soldiers specializing in aerial surveillance is now setting up a drone force to monitor Gaza and ensure compliance with the ceasefire.  They will be joined by UK military forces as well.

At first glance, it may appear the mission is to target potential Hamas military activity.  While it certainly will do that, it has another, even more important goal: to ensure the IDF is adhering to it as well.  Trump has Bibi’s number. He knows the latter will abrogate the agreement at the first opportunity.  The goal is not to give him any opportunities to do so.  Monitoring IDF movement and the positioning of its forces is key to this goal.

Trump’s rejection of decades of cautious US Middle East policy frightens regional states

Trump’s Middle East policy has upset decades of a US containment approach to regional conflict.  The main premise has been that hostility among nations and ethnic groups there is too compex and too vehement to resolve.  Multiple administrations attempted to tamp down conflict: manage, rather than solve it.

Trump has turned all that on its head.  He has removed all restraint, assassinating Iran’s military mastermind, Qassem Soleimani; joining Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear sites; attacking the Houthis, Palestinian allies; providing $20-billion in weapons used in the Gaza genocide. He also cheered Israel’s evisceration of its Hezbollah and Iranian enemies through assassination and a series of attacks which left its forces decimated.

Though Trump has a natural affinity for Israel’s geopolitical goals, he had an ulterior motive: he wanted to be able to call in his chits when the time came.  It came when he issued the 20-point peace plan. His previous support gave him leverage to demand Israel’s compliance.  Netanyahu realized that if Trump was willing to grant Israel free rein to pursue its own military objectives, then he could just as easily reverse course, when he determined that US interests no longer aligned with Israel’s.

This is indeed what’s unfolding in Gaza now.  Netanyahu is no longer free to act as he wishes. He’s on a tight leash and he knows it.  Trump has placed him in a bear hug.  The old mafia saying–keep you friends close…and your enemies closer–has been reversed.  Netanyahu, the erstwhile ally, is the “friend” Trump won’t let out of his sight.  He understands Bibi. He knows that he is a loose cannon. That he can’t be relied on.

The Israeli leader sees what Trump has done in the region.  For example, he rejected Israel’s hostile approach in Syria and negotiated with the forces who overthrew Assad.  The result was a removal of US sanctions and recognition of the new regime. While Israel pursued its goal of rendering Syria ungovernable, Trump plotted a different path.  He also negotiated a deal with Israel’s implacable enemy, the Houthi.  In return for its agreement to stop targeting US shipping in the gulf, it agreed to stop its attacks on Houthi targets.  This left Israel holding the bag as it watched Yemeni missiles land on Israeli soil, and retaliated by bombing Yemen.

Netanyahu understands that just as Trump joined in Israel’s strategic objectives he could just as easily turn against, and block them.  It leaves Israel will little maneuvering room.  Which is just the way Trump wants it.

But will the US president remain focused on Israel?  One key issue motivates him: retaining the support of the Gulf states.  Not only are they important clients for his luxury development deals, they spend billions on US weapons systems.  What the Saudis want, he does his best to provide.

For example, when Netanyahu took the foolhardy step of bombing Qatar in an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Hamas negotiating team, Trump hauled him down to the principal’s office for a good paddling. The result: Netanyahu was forced to issue a direct apology to Qatar’s emir and a promise never to do such a thing again.  He did all this in the Oval Office, in front of Trump who scripted the apology and held the phone as Bibi spoke.  It was a humiliation: the equivalent of taking Bibi to the woodshed.  But Bibi had to grin and bear it, because the US had become not only the indispensable ally, but the traffic cop who told him when he could stop or go.

This is a new phenomenon for Israel, which is used to having its own way in almost everything.  US presidents have been bowing to its will and the power of the Israel Lobby for nearly 80 years.  They’ve been afraid of Israel and of Aipac’s campaign war chest.  Now, the tables have turned. At least for the time being.  Whether I’m dusting off the headline I mentioned in the first paragraph for a future post, is yet to be determined.