According to his office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is headed to the US to talk about the second phase of the ceasefire with Hamas, the Palestinian leader.
As the Israeli leader left for the US on Sunday, negotiations for the second stage of the ceasefire are set to start in Washington, DC, according to Netanyahu’s office.
Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump on Tuesday for his first meeting with a foreign leader since his second-term inauguration, where he has previously claimed credit for the ceasefire agreement signed on January 19.
Two weeks into the first phase of the ceasefire, which will release nearly 2, 000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange, Netanyahu is making his US trip. The remaining captives’ release is anticipated to be covered in the second phase, which will also include discussions about putting a more permanent end to the conflict.
The Gaza ceasefire paused 15 months of an Israeli genocide in the enclave that killed more than 47, 000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health authorities.
Before departing from Tel Aviv, Netanyahu stated that he and Trump would talk about “victory over Hamas, achieving the release of all our hostages, and dealing with the Iranian terror axis” in the Middle East.
Netanyahu called it “telling” that he would be the first foreign leader to meet Trump since his inauguration. “I think it’s a testimony to the strength of the Israeli-American alliance”, he said.
Netanyahu’s first US trip since the ICC issued an arrest warrant for him in November for allegedly committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
The US does not adhere to the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the court, which has previously praised the ICC’s decision to issue a warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin in relation to the Ukraine war.
Senior US politicians have threatened to blacklist its top prosecutors and their families as they attempt to impose sanctions on the international court over the arrest warrants for Yoav Gallant and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
Fragile ceasefire
It’s unknown how committed Trump and Netanyahu are to advancing the ceasefire. His far-right partners are putting a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to renounce the agreement after the initial phase and restart the attacks on Gaza.
Trump, on the other hand, has sounded conflicting opinions about the possibility of a permanent end to the conflict. Asked on January 20, shortly after being sworn in, if he was confident the truce in Gaza would hold, he said: “I’m not confident”.
“It’s not our war, it’s their war”, he added.
More recently, Trump has also proposed to ethnically “clean out” Gaza, insisting Arab states Egypt and Jordan should take in displaced Palestinians from the enclave, a prospect they roundly rejected.
The second phase of the Gaza agreement is under intense pressure, according to Scott Lucas, a professor of international politics at University College Dublin. He claimed that Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israeli custody and that Israeli prisoners held there would only be released if the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire were to be kept in place.
“Here, you’re talking about four sides of pressure around Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump”, he said.
According to him, the hard right in Israel is under pressure, particularly from former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich from the cabinet.
“They don’t want a phase two. They want a military government in Gaza, they want displacement of Palestinians, and they’re actually talking about returning to war already”.
Then there is pressure from Israeli officials who believe that the release of all captives should be their top priority.
Palestinians are opposing military occupation, Lucas said, and Hamas will continue to oppose Israeli attempts to take control of Gaza.
Donald Trump is “fourth, who wants to be a peacemaker but is also steadfastly pro-Israel, so that his only option is to send all of the people of Gaza to Egypt and Jordan. Therefore, at this point, there is no way to square those four to form phase two.
Occupied West Bank settlements
Also on the agenda during Netanyahu’s visit could be Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Smotrich, who opposes the ceasefire and is a vocal settlement advocate, urged Netanyahu to raise the issue.
In a message to Netanyahu that made reference to the occupied West Bank, Smotrich said, “We must strengthen our grip and sovereignty over the homeland in Judea and Samaria.”
Netanyahu’s early meeting with Trump marks a clear departure from his ties with the previous US administration, which, despite being Israel’s largest arms supplier, had criticised its war conduct and paused some military shipments.
