Murat SofuogluToday marks the 600th day of Israel’s war in Gaza. The ongoing assault continues to kill scores of Palestinians daily, including children, as humanitarian aid is tightly restricted. Starving civilians, babies and the elderly among them, face desperate conditions in the besieged enclave.
Last week, in a rare back down, the Netanyahu government allowed a small shipment of American aid into Gaza reportedly under pressure from the Trump administration. In a recent statement, Hamas announced that it has reached a deal with US envoy Steve Witkoff on ending the Gaza war.
Trump, frustrated by the Gaza war and distressed by images of suffering Palestinian children, has instructed aides including Witkoff to urge Netanyahu to end it, according to Axios.
Signs of growing exasperation with Israel’s war are also emerging among its Western allies. In a recent joint statement, the UK, France and Canada found Israeli aim of controlling the whole Gaza “wholly disproportionate”. The UK, once the colonial ruler of Palestine, even suspended trade talks with Israel in protest over its continued military assaults.
Germany’s newly elected Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, issued a sharp rebuke: “What the Israeli Army is doing in the Gaza Strip right now—I honestly don’t understand what the goal is in causing such suffering to the civilian population.”
Unlike old times, Washington stayed silent on the critiques. Trump skipped Israel, much to Netanyahu’s dismay, during his highlighted Middle East tour. Tel Aviv has been a popular stop for many previous American presidents. Trump’s omission was widely interpreted as a deliberate diplomatic snub.
Could this convergence of Western pressure and Trump’s apparent annoyance finally bring an end to the bloodshed?
Can Trump stop bloodshed?
Like Trump and Western leaders, the Israeli public has also appeared to be increasingly tired of Netanyahu’s Gaza war as recent polls show that at least 70 percent of Israelis support an end to the war in Gaza. In a recent Haaretz article, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert condemned Netanyahu’s Gaza actions as “war crimes”.
“Trump can make a huge difference if he chooses to use his political capital to enforce on Israel the end of the destruction of Gaza, and to launch a political process with the willing Arab Sunni states, the European powers, a new Palestinian political leadership, and Israel,” says Omer Bartov, an Israeli-born historian and professor of genocide studies at Brown University.
Bartov, who served in the Israeli army during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, has long been a critic of the Netanyahu government and its policies across occupied Palestinian lands, warning that the Zionist project can “implode” if it continues in its current form in the next two or three decades.
“Forceful action by Trump of the kind that Biden avoided—thereby perpetuating Israel’s annihilatory campaign in Gaza—would either compel Netanyahu to cooperate or will lead to the fall of his extremist and corrupt government and open the path to a new future for Israel as well,” Bartov tells TRT World.
Some recent US diplomatic gestures point to a recalibration in Washington’s Middle East policy. These include a tentative understanding with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, an Iranian ally and enemy of Israel, renewed talks with Tehran over its nuclear program, and even direct contact with Hamas. These moves suggest that Netanyahu may be losing favour in the political circles of Washington.
According to Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US, recent Trump moves are not aligned with “a longstanding principle” that both countries do things in coordination with each other.
But unlike Bartov, other analysts are not so hopeful about a possible Trump-led Western intervention to stop Netanyahu’s bloody actions in Gaza. The war in Gaza has now dragged on for 600 days since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.
Summary: October 7 has upended the familiar dynamics of the Israel-Palestine conflict, forcing global observers to reassess its long-term implications and possible outcomes.
Joost Hiltermann, a special adviser for MENA at International Crisis Group, is not persuaded that “Trump cares enough about Gaza to help negotiate anything beyond no famine, and the departure of Gazans elsewhere, so that he can develop the place according to his imagination.”
Hiltermann doubts Netanyahu would ever “agree to a long-term truce,” but he adds that the Israeli leader “will not last forever.” Netanyahu is already Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
Hiltermann also draws attention to the fact that Trump “has never talked about a long-term truce” something Hamas has long demanded from Israel. “Trump didn't say anything he hadn't said before: stop the war in Gaza (which is only part of his vision). It is consistent with his ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It has nothing to do with Gaza.”
Kamel Hawwash, a Palestinian-British academic and political analyst, is even more sceptical. “I can’t see how Trump can force Netanyahu to do something,” he says, adding that the Republican-led Congress remains “very much supportive of Israel.”
While it’s true that Republicans are the staunch allies of the Netanyahu government, the current political equation is quite different from the time of the Democratic President Joe Biden administration.
Many Republican lawmakers, indebted to the MAGA movement, are unlikely to challenge a new Gaza policy if Trump pushes for one. That could weaken Netanyahu’s remaining support within Republican circles.
But Hawwash, a London-based analyst, still sees that the Israeli lobby holds its influence on the Congress, which will be maintaining to vote on any resolution that “will say that Israel has the right to self-defence and must continue.”
Hawwash connects Trump’s changing attitude toward Gaza to his recent tour in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states like Qatar, a country which has long supported Palestinian cause, hosting Hamas leaders and delegations. “They probably demanded from him that the war has to stop now,” he tells TRT World.
Hiltermann describes Trump’s skipping of Israel in his recent Gulf tour as “clearly a snub” related to his priority to do business with rich Arab leaders and “Netanyahu's unwillingness to end the war.”
Hawwash is not optimistic for a long-term end to the bloodshed as Israel’s longest-serving leader “feels he's quite close to the full destruction of Gaza and possibly the expulsion of the Palestinians.”
“He's not going to let that go unless there's a concerted effort, not just by Trump, but by all the world leaders to actually take action by stopping arms to Israel and by expelling ambassadors if he doesn't stop, but I see no sign of that at the moment.”
