When Donald Trump arrived in Israel last week to celebrate his Gaza agreement, Israelis of all stripes fell over themselves to thank him for his efforts to end the war and bring hostages home. The Knesset was lit up in red, white, and blue; its members gave the president a two-and-a-half-minute standing ovation when he arrived. A Tel Aviv beach was decorated with a giant silhouette of his face. Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, announced that Trump would be awarded the country’s Presidential Medal of Honor, its highest civilian commendation. But one notable person didn’t join the festivities. In fact, she boycotted them.
The day before, Limor Son Har-Melech, a far-right member of Parliament, had declared that she was “not interested in joining the applause” and announced that she would not attend the president’s Knesset speech. “President Trump presented the current deal as a peace agreement,” she wrote. “It is not. It is a shameful agreement.” Har-Melech’s outrage was sharp but not surprising. Since October 7, 2023, she had been one of the chief advocates for the Israeli resettlement of Gaza. Just two months after the Hamas massacre, she said she told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “the only image of victory in this war is that we will see Jewish homes in Gaza. Victory will be when we see the children of Israel playing in the streets of Gaza.”
Polls showed that most Israelis opposed this land-grabbing plan. But Netanyahu was beholden for his political future to the radical minority that supported it, and constantly catered to their whims. As the war in Gaza dragged on, and Israel plunged deeper into the Palestinian territory, the settler right appeared poised to obtain its prize. Trump called to “clean out” Gaza and relocate its population to make way for a “Riviera of the Middle East.” Nearly two dozen lawmakers in Netanyahu’s coalition signed a letter to Israel’s defense minister urging him to permit activists into Gaza itself to scout possible settlement locations.
The pieces were falling into place. That is, until Trump halted the war and imposed a peace plan that explicitly rejected any Israeli territorial designs on Gaza.
It wasn’t supposed to go this way. When Trump was reelected, members of the Israeli right rejoiced, believing that he would happily facilitate their aspirations. Instead, he has begun to frustrate them. The first blow came on September 25, when the president categorically ruled out any attempt to extend Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, which Palestinians claim for their future state. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s not gonna happen.” The president’s Arab allies had made clear that annexation could shatter the Abraham Accords forged in Trump’s first term; faced with the potential unraveling of one of his signature achievements, the president acted quickly to curb the Israeli right’s ambitions.
That intervention turned out to be just a prelude. Four days later, Trump unveiled his 20-point plan for ending the Gaza war—and punted on his prior proposal to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians. “Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough,” read point No. 2. “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return,” added point 12. “We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.” Trump then proceeded to bully both Hamas and Netanyahu into accepting this agreement.
No wonder Har-Melech and her allies were angry. Just days before, they’d appeared ascendant. Now, thanks to Trump, they were the skunks at the party, watching the public celebrate peace without any thought of settling Gaza. While the war was at full tilt, Har-Melech’s minority settler faction had been able to exercise outsize influence over Netanyahu’s decision making, deepening Israel’s entanglement in Gaza. As soon as the conflict began to wind down, so did the faction’s ability to shape events.
But although Trump may have momentarily stuffed the far right into a locker, it will slink out as soon as he turns his attention elsewhere. “There will be Jewish settlements in Gaza,” vowed Bezalel Smotrich, a powerful far-right minister in Netanyahu’s government, the day after Trump’s victory speech in Israel. “We have patience,” he went on, “we have determination and faith, and with God’s help, we will continue the series of victories, and the big miracles.” On Sunday, two Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza, and the army responded with air strikes. Smotrich gleefully posted one word on X before the shaky cease-fire was reestablished: “War!” The settler movement did not get where it is by giving up; its activists excel at exploiting every opening.
Trump’s Gaza plan presents many such openings. According to the agreement, in the early stages of the current deal, Israel will remain in control of much of Gaza’s uninhabited territory until Hamas is disarmed and displaced. These are precisely the areas that the far right hopes to settle and even annex to Israel. Hamas is dragging its feet on releasing the bodies of dead Israeli hostages, publicly executing Palestinians opposed to its rule, and showing no sign that it intends to give up its weapons. The Israeli army and Hamas are still skirmishing along the cease-fire line. Even if none of this is enough to capsize the accord, it will likely delay further implementation and provide a window for the settlers and their political allies to try to insinuate themselves into those parts of Gaza.
Only Trump can stop this from happening—at least until Israel holds new elections next year that could boot Netanyahu and his partners from power. The president can pressure Hamas’s patrons in Qatar and Turkey to compel the group to disarm, and he can strong-arm Netanyahu into preventing settler spoilers from upending the fragile peace. What Netanyahu wants is not this peace deal or avaricious annexations, but to stay in power. And he will make whatever choice seems most likely to keep him there.
Like other political leaders with an exaggerated sense of their own importance, Netanyahu perceives himself as indispensable, and his leadership as the only thing standing between his country and catastrophe. Equating his personal interest with the national interest, he justifies every reversal and betrayal of past principles as necessary for Israel’s survival. Such compromised leadership is perilous for Israel, but advantageous for Trump: As Netanyahu’s only consequential friend on the international stage, the U.S. president has immense sway over the Israeli leader’s choices. Left alone, Netanyahu will act however his coalition tells him to, but countermanded by Trump, he will have different incentives.
The truth is, Israel does not and has never needed Netanyahu to survive; it needs to survive Netanyahu. How Trump chooses to treat the Israeli premier and his far-right coalition will determine not just whether the president’s peace plan will succeed, but whether Israel will succeed in outlasting its extremist minoritarian government.
