For How Long Will Trump Accommodate Netanyahu’s Subterfuge On Gaza? – OpEd
By Osama Al-Sharif
Ten months after the Sharm El-Sheikh agreement was hailed as a historic breakthrough and a much-delayed attempt to bring Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza to an end, the Board of Peace has finally published a detailed road map for implementing US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan. While some analysts saw the road map as an unnecessary addendum, others expressed hope that the plan would finally be implemented.
The board’s statement reiterates that all parties have reaffirmed their commitment to the plan, which — together with UN Security Council Resolution 2803 — constitutes the international framework meant to govern the entire process. In practice, Trump’s plan and the subsequent road map have been met not with execution but with open defiance. Israel has not implemented even the first phase of a deal it publicly embraced. And in the days since the road map’s release, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has moved from quiet stalling to outright rejection.
The contrast between what the plan calls for and the situation in Gaza has become absurdly ironic. The ceasefire that was supposed to end the war has only slowed the pace of killings and destruction. Israeli forces have pushed the so-called Yellow Line forward so much that it now swallows about 70 percent of the Strip, confining more than 2 million people to a shrinking fraction of their own territory. Strikes have killed well over 1,200 Palestinians since the ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10.
Rather than easing since the road map’s publication, they have intensified — at least 19 people were killed in a single day this past weekend, part of a death toll of 26 over just two days, including a young family killed in an airstrike on their apartment. This is not the record of a government honoring its part of the peace plan. It is the record of a government managing extermination while calling it a ceasefire.
What has changed in recent days is the pretense. Where Netanyahu previously avoided public comment, his office now states plainly that the road map “does not reflect Israel’s positions.” His spokesman has said Israel will not withdraw its forces before Hamas has fully surrendered its weapons — inverting the sequencing the road map actually calls for, in which withdrawal and disarmament proceed in linked, parallel phases, not one strictly after the other. The Board of Peace, for its part, has now said there will be no Israeli withdrawal before Hamas disarms, effectively handing Netanyahu the leverage he has been demanding.
Behind the scenes, Israel has also submitted specific objections, reportedly through board member and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Chief among them: Israel wants the weapons collected from Hamas destroyed outright, not stored under the custody of the new Palestinian technocratic administration the road map establishes. It also rejects any role for Qatar and Turkiye — two of the plan’s guarantor states — in verifying that each side is meeting its obligations.
And Israel is demanding continued freedom to conduct military operations inside areas that are supposed to fall under the remit of the incoming International Stabilization Force. Each of these objections rewrites terms Hamas has already agreed to, after the fact, once the other side has made its central concession: surrendering its arms and stepping back from governing the Strip entirely.
The response from Netanyahu’s coalition has been louder still. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Settlement Minister Orit Strock sent Netanyahu an urgent letter demanding an immediate halt to the entry of multinational forces into Gaza and a Cabinet vote to block the road map outright, arguing the published text differs from what ministers were shown when they approved it. They are angered above all that the document “openly presents the establishment of a Palestinian state as a diplomatic objective” — a line they call an existential threat to Israel.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has gone further, rejecting the road map altogether and calling for Israel to continue assassinating Hamas officials — a position consistent with a security establishment that has treated the targeted killings of police commanders and faction leaders as a routine tool throughout the ceasefire.
None of this should surprise anyone who has watched Netanyahu manage previous ceasefires. This is a government that has treated agreements not as commitments but as intervals — pauses to be managed, reinterpreted and quietly hollowed out until the next round of fighting resumes on more favorable terms. What is new is how openly that playbook is now being run. Netanyahu’s calculation, it appears, is to avoid locking himself into a clear path forward, with timetables and commitments to practical things, and instead push the entire question past Israel’s election.
Israel’s actions expose its true intentions. The killings persist unabated, as well as the siege and the obstruction of the plan’s second phase, all without Tel Aviv ever formally declaring that it rejects the road map. That is the essence of the subterfuge — not a refusal anyone has to defend but a slow bleed that never quite closes the door.
And it is a strategy for which Netanyahu has a clear political motive. Israel faces a general election in October — the first since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks — and Netanyahu is trailing in the polls, while his coalition partners are threatening to bolt over any compromise on Gaza. A prime minister boxed in by ministers who reject the plan outright and openly champion resettlement has every incentive to keep finding reasons why implementation cannot yet begin. Every week of delay is a week in which Netanyahu avoids a rupture with his own governing partners and in which the settler movement’s ambitions in Gaza remain alive rather than foreclosed.
This brings the question back to Washington. Trump has invested enormous personal capital in this plan — his name is on it, his 20 points anchor it and he called Hamas’ disarmament announcement a “monumental step” toward peace. The Board of Peace exists at his initiative. But a plan is only as credible as the willingness of its sponsor to enforce it against the party most inclined to undermine it. So far, Israel’s objections and open defiance have been met with compliance by those who are supposed to oversee the plan’s implementation, rather than open reprimand and condemnation.
The subterfuge and delay tactics are there for all to see — weapons must be destroyed, not stored, guarantor states will be excluded from sending troops, no Israeli withdrawal until Hamas is fully disarmed and, to top it all, Israel will carry out unrestricted strikes inside zones run by international forces. One must ask: Will Gaza’s governance, security and reconstruction ever proceed or will implementation remain permanently contingent on an Israeli approval that never arrives?
Hamas has made genuine concessions. The road map is clear, published and reaffirmed in writing by all parties, including Israel. What remains unanswered is whether Trump is prepared to treat Netanyahu’s escalating objections as what they are — a rolling renegotiation of terms already agreed upon, backed by a far-right coalition that has said the quiet part out loud — or whether he will indefinitely keep absorbing them as reasonable caveats.
At the same time, Gaza’s death toll climbs and the Yellow Line keeps creeping west. Ten months of Israeli deception and US accommodation have already passed. The killings in Gaza never stopped. The question that must be asked now is how much time Netanyahu believes he can still buy to keep the plan stuck in the sand.
- Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and a political commentator based in Amman. X: @plato010
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