Kushner and Netanyahu update the agreement on Gaza

There is one single point on which the entire Israeli political spectrum agrees, whether it be Benjamin Netanyahu’s majority government – with Itamar Ben-Gvir suggesting the killing of forty Palestinians a night – or the diverse, highly combative opposition, which has no need for the inhumane demands of the current Minister of National Security, from Gadi Eisenkot to Naftali Bennett: the future of the plan for Gaza. Everyone is adamant that the IDF’s withdrawal will not take place until Hamas has surrendered its weapons. No plan can go ahead whilst there is a militiaman with a Kalashnikov in his hand.

Armed with this widely shared information on Israel’s position, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the Executive Director of the Peace Council, Nickolay Mladenov, and the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, travelled to Israel yesterday to meet Prime Minister Netanyahu and the heads of the Shabak (internal intelligence) and Aman (military intelligence). The meeting lasted more than four hours and, at the end, the Americans and Israelis agreed that, in the initial phase, the weapons handed over by Hamas would be transferred to the US-led Israeli security forces; consequently, it will be the United States that keeps track of what the terrorists hand over, rather than the Palestinian technocratic government due to be established in Gaza, as had been proposed in recent weeks. Furthermore, Israeli operations in the Strip against threats will continue (even though Trump has said it would be better if the Strip were no longer targeted), there will be no further withdrawal of the IDF, and the reconstruction of Gaza will not begin until Hamas has been completely disarmed – a commitment the group also confirmed at the weekend, when its members met Kushner himself in Cairo. Israel is in the midst of an election campaign, but the concessions that any future Israeli prime minister will be willing to make remain these, and it matters little whom the US President, Donald Trump, decides to back during the election. So far, his friendship with the White House has always been a strong point for Netanyahu, but now even the current prime minister is preoccupied with the task of proving that he is above American demands. For Israel, the United States is an indispensable, irreplaceable ally, but the fear remains of being forced to do as Washington commands, and Netanyahu does not want to tie his legacy to interference from the White House. As for the future of the Gaza Strip, it is unlikely that the Americans will be able to force Israel to withdraw or end its targeted operations; however, the Trump administration is deeply committed to the Peace Council project, to the extent that it wishes to replicate it in every context: in Lebanon as well as against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Two weeks ago, Israel had rejected the plan for Gaza, and whilst the Israeli Prime Minister’s words were undoubtedly coloured by the tensions of the election campaign, there was also a need to re-establish contact with the Americans and to return to the plan’s original objective: to ensure that terrorists were no longer able to govern the Strip. And their power stems from their weapons.