[News] Why is Trump pressuring Israel to end its war on Gaza?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-trump-pressuring-israel-end-its-war-gaza>
Why is Trump pressuring Israel to end its war on Gaza?

Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> Power
Suits <https://electronicintifada.net/blog/power-suits> 15 January 2025
------------------------------

As of Wednesday morning in Palestine, hopes remained high that a deal to
end the Israeli genocide in Gaza and free Palestinian and Israeli captives
was imminent.

Negotiators in Doha were reportedly ironing out the final details on an
agreement that would bring a reprieve to a population that has endured more
than 15 months of relentless Israeli bombing and starvation amid
unspeakable atrocities, killing at least tens of thousands and upending the
lives of millions.

If agreed and implemented, the deal will also represent a major strategic
defeat for Israel.

The outlines of the deal – as reported
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/gaza-ceasefire-hostage-deal-on-brink-of-finalization-as-reports-spell-out-details/>
in the media – are for a three-phase process based on the framework
<https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/details-of-the-ceasefire-deal-that-hamas-has-accepted/>
laid out by US President Joe Biden in May and accepted
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/biden-admits-israels-defeat-gaza>
by Hamas.

It would see an immediate ceasefire, a massive inflow of humanitarian aid
and a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, accompanied by prisoner
exchanges over the course of multiple weeks.

A key question I discussed with journalist Rania Khalek on her BreakThrough
News program *Dispatches* on Tuesday is why the same deal that went nowhere
last year is now apparently on the brink of being sealed.

In a wide-ranging discussion we also talked about the downfall of Syria’s
government, the future of the Axis of Resistance and much more. You can
watch the whole discussion in the video.

https://youtu.be/3uVgVrwGwM8
The resistance is still strong

As I told Khalek, the two key factors are the strength of the resistance
and Donald Trump, who returns to the White House as US president in less
than a week.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Trump has been putting extraordinary
pressure on Israel of a kind that is shocking Tel Aviv and that the Biden
administration has absolutely refused to apply.

After 15 months, Palestinian resistance fighters are still attacking
Israeli occupation forces <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CcTlIKibnM> in
every part of Gaza where they are present, including in the far northern
areas that Israel entered and supposedly gained control of in the earliest
weeks of its invasion.
The heavy losses
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-army-changes-combat-strategy-in-northern-gaza-after-heavy-losses-report/3448161>
and constant attrition have for months been sapping the ability and morale
<https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240619-israeli-army-urgent-need-troops-amid-rising-casualties-in-gaza>
of the Israeli army to carry on a futile effort to defeat a resistance that
moves through an extensive tunnel system that remains largely intact.

In light of this, a clear majority of Israelis
<https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-837583> now support a
comprehensive deal to end the war, not merely a temporary pause until
whatever captives have survived Israel’s indiscriminate bombing come home.
That’s a sea-change in an Israeli public whose lust for revenge against
Palestinians in Gaza for the 7 October 2023 resistance operation had seemed
insatiable.
Where the power really lies

The other key factor is Trump’s intervention. Last week, the
president-elect sent his Middle East envoy to read Israel the riot act.

In a symbolic playing out of the real power relations
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/why-blaming-israel-lobby-western-middle-east-policies-misguided>
between Israel and the United States, Steve Witkoff informed the office of
Benjamin Netanyahu last Friday that he’d be arriving in Israel the next day
and wanted to meet him.

Netanyahu’s aides “politely explained that was in the middle of the Sabbath
but that the prime minister would gladly meet him Saturday night,” according
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-13/ty-article/.premium/trumps-mideast-envoy-forced-netanyahu-to-accept-a-gaza-plan-he-repeatedly-rejected/00000194-615c-d4d0-a1f4-fbfdce850000>
to Israeli newspaper *Haaretz*.

“Witkoff’s blunt reaction took them by surprise,” *Haaretz* added. “He
explained to them in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him.
His message was loud and clear.”

Netanyahu obeyed orders from Trump’s envoy and showed up at his office as
commanded “for an official meeting with Witkoff, who then returned to Qatar
to seal the deal.”

The result of that meeting, according to *Haaretz*, is that “Witkoff has
forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over
the past half year,” making serious concessions to a Hamas that has not
budged from its position that the release of Israeli captives must be
conditioned on the release of Palestinian prisoners, an end to the war and
a complete – albeit phased – Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

This one act could shatter the myth
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/why-blaming-israel-lobby-western-middle-east-policies-misguided>
that the Israel lobby holds decisive sway over the US government.
A strategic defeat

How would this represent a strategic defeat for Israel and in effect a
victory for the Palestinian resistance in the face of the horrific and
still not fully known toll of Israel’s ongoing genocide?

Simply put, Israel will have utterly failed to achieve the “total victory”
Netanyahu repeatedly vowed.

“The war in Gaza could end tomorrow if Hamas surrenders, disarms and
returns all the hostages,” Netanyahu told the US Congress in June
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/were-protecting-you-full-text-of-netanyahus-address-to-congress/>.
“But if they don’t, Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’ military
capabilities and its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home.”

“That’s what total victory means, and we will settle for nothing less,” the
prime minister added.

If this deal goes ahead, Israel will have achieved none of those goals:
Hamas will not have been destroyed or disarmed. It will still remain in de
facto control inside Gaza – whatever post-war arrangements are put in place
– and Israel will have failed to impose its will on a tiny besieged
territory after almost 500 days of genocidal extermination and
unprecedented mass destruction.

Israel’s barely hidden desires to ethnically cleanse the population of Gaza
and resettle it with Jewish colonists will have been defeated.

Israel, moreover, will not return to the place it once held in the world.
More than ever it will be a despised pariah whose leaders and soldiers are
fugitive war criminals unable to freely travel the globe.
Unexpected pressure

“The pressure Trump is exerting right now is not the kind that Israel
expected from him. The pressure is the essence of the matter,” one
Netanyahu surrogate said recently
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-13/ty-article/.premium/trumps-mideast-envoy-forced-netanyahu-to-accept-a-gaza-plan-he-repeatedly-rejected/00000194-615c-d4d0-a1f4-fbfdce850000>
.

Everyone, especially Israeli leaders, appear surprised that Trump – who was
as staunchly pro-Israel as could be in his first term – would be putting
any pressure at all on Netanyahu.

During the US election campaign, Trump had talked
<https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/06/27/biden-trump-first-presidential-debate/israel-hamas-war-00165608>
of letting Israel “finish the job” in Gaza – red meat for his base and for
Israel’s government.

As this writer noted, an intriguing indication that something else was
afoot was Trump’s posting on social media
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-posts-clip-of-prof-calling-netanyahu-obsessive-about-getting-us-to-fight-iran/>
earlier this month of a video
<https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113789043423746072> highly
critical of Netanyahu.

In the video, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs accuses Netanyahu
of dragging the United States into the war in Iraq, trying to instigate a
US war with Iran and calling the Israeli leader a “deep, dark son of a
bitch.”
It was a sign that – unlike Biden’s – Trump’s unconditional support could
not be taken for granted.

But there were earlier signs: In July, even before the US election, Trump told
Netanyahu
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-told-netanyahu-he-wants-gaza-war-over-by-time-he-enters-office-sources/>
that he wanted the war in Gaza to end before Trump would return to office.

Witkoff, Trump’s envoy, has reportedly been firm and consistent about that
deadline.

And in the closing stages of the campaign, Trump courted traditionally
predominantly Democratic voters disgusted by the Biden-Harris
administration’s implacable support for the genocide.

“The Muslim and Arab voters in Michigan and across the country want a stop
to the endless wars and a return to peace in the Middle East. That’s all
they want,” Trump told
<https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/26/politics/muslim-leaders-michigan-trump-endorse/index.html>
a rally in Michigan, which he ended up winning along with every other swing
state.
What are Trump’s motivations?

As Khalek and this writer discussed, it is not necessary to view Trump as
having any sort of sympathy with the Palestinian struggle to understand
what might be behind his surprising willingness to pressure Israel now.

While Trump is often unpredictable and mercurial, a consistent aspect of
his worldview is that he does not view America’s traditional “allies” as
anything more than client states who are taking advantage of American
largesse.

He appears to have no sentimental attachment to them, nor does he see them
as vital to his “America First” agenda.

This was his view of NATO in his first term, when he accused Germany
<https://www.dw.com/en/trump-nato-germany/a-54451443>, supposedly the
bedrock of the transatlantic security alliance, of “making a fortune” off
US troops stationed in the country.

Demanding billions from ostensible allies and partners, he thundered, “Why
should we defend countries and not be reimbursed?”

He has now doubled down
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2025/01/07/nato-5-percent-gdp-defense-trump/77514412007/>
on that position.

He’s even turned on Canada
<https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2132288/trump-says-u-s-doesnt-need-canadian-cars-lumber-or-dairy-consumers-may-not-agree>,
the largest
<https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/3250-canada-and-united-states-numbers-unique-relationship>
US trading partner, saying the US is being exploited and does not need
Canada’s goods.

He’s even called for the US to absorb Canada as its 51st state.

Given Trump’s disdain for countries that have long been revered as – albeit
subordinate – partners by the transatlantic ruling classes, the question is
why would he treat Israel any differently?

This is especially the case when Israel has long been the biggest recipient
<https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/countries-that-receive-the-most-foreign-aid-from-the-u-s#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20Ukraine%20received%20about,in%20February%20of%20that%20year.>
of American largesse.

At the very least, Trump seems likely to take the approach that with
America paying Israel’s bills, America will give the orders.

While the Gaza deal is not yet done, the progress made in a few days with
Trump’s intervention underscores that Washington giving the orders is and
has always been the true nature of the US-Israel relationship.

These developments expose without a shadow of a doubt that the Biden
administration’s failure to achieve a ceasefire was always wilful, and that
the Democratic Party government positively chose to arm and support the
genocide.

There will have to be accountability for that.
What Trump’s bigger plans are for the region remain to be seen.

As has been widely noted, one of his most generous campaign donors is
fanatically
pro-Israel billionaire Miriam Adelson
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/miriam-adelson-now-leads-sheldons-pro-israel-empire>
.

She has denied reports
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/miriam-adelson-gives-100-million-to-trump-campaign-making-good-on-reported-pledge/>
that she conditioned her $100 million gift on Trump’s support for Israeli
annexation of the occupied West Bank.

But there’s no doubt that she and other elements of Trump’s base will be
pushing for and using their positions near and within the administration to
implement extreme anti-Palestinian measures, including even more domestic
repression of the Palestine solidarity movement, something Trump himself
has promised
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/28/trump-promises-crackdown-on-pro-palestinian-protests-if-elected>
.

And no one should be surprised if and when Trump delivers.

But Trump is returning as president of a United States that is significantly
weaker <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpwTtM99D5w> in relative terms than
when he first took office, given the continued rise of China, Russia and
new multipolar formations such as BRICS.

The United States may no longer be able to unilaterally impose its will on
the whole world, but it can impose its will on Israel, its tiny genocidal
dependency in Southwest Asia.

For the sake of the Palestinian people in Gaza, let’s hope the pressure
from Trump brings an end to the horrific bloodshed as quickly as possible.
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