Across Israeli society, the reaction to the news of a Gaza ceasefire deal has been almost uniform: Joy.
In Tel Aviv, the families of those taken captive during the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 celebrated on Thursday after the announcement. And a man dressed as United States President Donald Trump – who played a large part in brokering the deal – carried Israeli and US flags and posed for photographs with smiling passersby.
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Two years of war on Gaza have fractured Israeli society. The minority who have openly opposed Israel’s killing of more than 67,000 Palestinians say they have been ostracised, while those who cheered on what experts have confirmed is a genocide have been left angered by growing international condemnation of Israel’s aggression.
“I cried when I got the news,” Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said from Berlin. “It’s really big. It’s like there’s a complete emotional unravelling across Israel; it’s like people are decompressing. There’s just massive, massive relief.”
Cautiously optimistic
For some, the news seems too good to be true, with speculation and nerves turning to how the ceasefire may ultimately unravel, as a deal earlier this year did.
“Everyone is happy. It’s what we’ve been calling for for two years,” said Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of parliament from the left-wing Hadash-Ta’al party. “I’ve been watching videos from Gaza, television from Tel Aviv showing the families of the hostages: Everyone is happy.
“Though there’s still caution,” she added. “There’s a feeling that someone, somewhere will find a reason to return to the war. People don’t trust this government – not just in Gaza, but in Israel, too.”
Much of that doubt centres on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has previously resisted calls to end the war at every opportunity.
Accusations from political opponents and captives’ families that he was prolonging the conflict for his own political ends – to ensure that his coalition holds together – have persisted throughout the war. Former US President Joe Biden also suggested that may be the case.
Today’s ceasefire does little to remove that suspicion. Netanyahu still faces the prospect of a verdict in his long-running corruption trial, an inquiry into his own failings before the October 7 attack, as well as the controversy over extending Israel’s military draft to its ultra-Orthodox community, whose parties are an important part of Netanyahu’s governing coalition. All of these have been conveniently relegated to secondary concerns while the war on Gaza has continued, but that will change once the fighting ends.
Nevertheless, with elections due by next year, or potentially even earlier, Netanyahu has successes that he can point to, particularly in weakening the Iranian-backed “axis of resistance” in the wider region. Perhaps most notable were the 12-day war with Iran in June, and the decapitation of much of the Lebanese group Hezbollah’s leadership in a war last year.
“Netanyahu is going to portray this as a victory,” the prime minister’s former aide and political pollster, Mitchell Barak, told Al Jazeera from West Jerusalem. “He can say he’s achieved everything he wanted to at the start of the war. He’s got the hostages back, he’s destroyed Hamas. On the sidelines of this, he’ll also claim that he used the opportunity to wipe out Hezbollah, weaken Iran and watch over as the Syrian regime fell. He’s reshaped the Middle East, he’ll claim, and removed many, if not all, of the main threats facing Israel.”
Others in Netanyahu’s far-right coalition already appear ready to oppose the deal. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have voiced hostility to the ceasefire, and have previously pledged to leave the government if a deal is passed that they do not agree with. However, what meaningful resistance they can muster – with Israel’s political opposition already pledging to support the government to secure the deal – is unclear.
“Hadash and the so-called opposition have all said they’ll support the ceasefire,” Touma-Suleiman said of a mainstream opposition that has, through the last two years, largely backed Israel’s actions in Gaza. “Ben-Gvir and Smotrich will make some noise, but they can’t really do much.”
The hand of Trump
How much the Israeli public credits Netanyahu, as opposed to Trump, for the ceasefire is unclear.
The US has been Israel’s staunchest ally amid international criticism of its actions in Gaza. In addition to its blanket backing at the United Nations, reports from Brown University’s Costs of War Project released this week confirmed what many long suspected: That the US treasury largely financed Israel’s war on Gaza and its attacks across the region.
However, for many Israelis, Israel’s failed strike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar and the unified response from Arab states proved a turning point for the US administration and its priorities within the Middle East, and ultimately led to Trump telling Netanyahu that he had to agree to a deal and end the war.
“I think Trump, allied with this coalition of Muslim and Arab states such as Turkiye and Qatar, probably succeeded in forcing the Israeli government’s hand,” Flashenberg said. “This could have been reached earlier, which suggests Trump forced it.”
The future is unwritten
“Netanyahu has to complete the first stage,” Touma-Suleiman said of the loosely worded ceasefire plan. “We know that, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about the second phase.
“That’s still to be negotiated – and on Israel’s side, those negotiations are going to be led by a government that is probably looking to restart the war.”
However, any effort to resume hostilities would unfold against the backdrop of an unpredictable US president who, having sent his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to negotiate the ceasefire, appears heavily invested in the process.
“How long this will last depends on Trump,” Barak said. “He uses the presidency as a global bully pulpit. He’s shown he’s ready to do anything, irrespective of the norms, as he writes his own rulebook with new norms.
“Israel has always been a critical ally of the US in the Middle East, as well as its most favoured nation, but it’s not really clear any more if Trump particularly cares about critical allies or favoured nations, or even foreign allies in general,” Barak continued. “He wants peace, and Netanyahu knows that. He knows Trump could really leave him – and that would be a disaster.
Source: Aljazeera
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