{"id":7086,"date":"2025-12-31T17:27:48","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T17:27:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=7086"},"modified":"2025-12-31T17:27:48","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T17:27:48","slug":"four-reasons-why-benjamin-netanyahu-may-not-want-a-gaza-ceasefire-to-hold-israel-palestine-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=7086","title":{"rendered":"Four reasons why Benjamin Netanyahu may not want a Gaza ceasefire to hold | Israel-Palestine conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reached the end of his latest trip to the United States and appears to have gained what he wants from President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Trump hailed Netanyahu after their meeting on Monday, calling him a \u201chero\u201d and saying Israel \u2013 and by extension its prime minister \u2013 had \u201clived up to the plan 100 percent\u201d in reference to the US president\u2019s signature Gaza ceasefire.<\/p>\n

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Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n

list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n

That is despite reports emerging last week<\/a> that US officials were growing frustrated over Netanyahu\u2019s apparent \u201cslow walking\u201d of the 20-point ceasefire plan \u2013 imposed by the US administration in October \u2013 suspecting that the Israeli prime minister might be hoping to keep the door open to resuming hostilities against the Palestinian group Hamas at a time of his choosing.<\/p>\n

Under the terms of that agreement \u2013 after the exchange of all captives held in Gaza, living and dead, aid deliveries into the enclave and the freezing of all front lines \u2013 Gaza would move towards phase two, which includes negotiations on establishing a technocratic \u201cboard of peace\u201d to administer the enclave and the deployment of an international security force to safeguard it.<\/p>\n

\"Netanyahu
US President Donald Trump, right, called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a \u2018hero\u2019 during his visit to Trump\u2019s Florida estate on December 29, 2025, saying he had lived up to Trump\u2019s ceasefire plan \u2018100 percent\u2019 [Jonathan Ernst\/Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So far, Netanyahu has not allowed in all of the required aid that Gaza desperately needs and is also maintaining that phase two cannot be entered into until Hamas returns the body of the last remaining captive. He has also demanded that Hamas disarms before Israel withdraws its forces, a suggestion fully endorsed by Trump after Monday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

Hamas has repeatedly rejected disarmament being forced upon it by Israel, and officials have said that the question of arms was an internal Palestinian matter to be discussed between Palestinian factions.<\/p>\n

So is Netanyahu deliberately trying to avoid entering the second phase of the agreement, and why would that be the case?<\/p>\n

Here are four reasons why Netanyahu might be happy with things just as they are:<\/p>\n

He\u2019s under pressure from his right<\/h2>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s ruling coalition is, by any metric, the most right wing in the country\u2019s history. Throughout the war on Gaza, the support of Israel\u2019s hardliners has proven vital in shepherding the prime minister\u2019s coalition through periods of intense domestic protest and international criticism.<\/p>\n

Now, many on the right, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich,\u00a0oppose the ceasefire,\u00a0protesting against the release of Palestinian prisoners and insisting that Gaza be occupied.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s defence minister,\u00a0Israel Katz, has also shown little enthusiasm for honouring the deal his country committed to in October. Speaking at a ceremony to mark the expansion of the latest of Israel\u2019s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, Katz claimed that Israel\u2019s forces would remain in Gaza, eventually clearing the way for further settlements.<\/p>\n

Katz later walked his comments back, reportedly after coming under pressure from the US.<\/p>\n

\"Israel's
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz [Menahem Kahana\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He doesn\u2019t want an international force in Gaza<\/h2>\n

Allowing an international force to deploy to Gaza would limit Israel\u2019s operational freedom, constraining its military\u2019s ability to re-enter Gaza, conduct targeted strikes or pursue Hamas remnants within the enclave.<\/p>\n

So far, despite the ceasefire, Israeli forces have killed more than 400 people in the enclave since agreeing to halt fighting on October 10.<\/p>\n

Politically, agreeing to an international stabilisation force, particularly one drawn from neighbouring states, would broaden what Israel has often seen as a domestic war into an international conflict with many of the strategic, diplomatic and political decisions over that conflict being made by actors outside of its control.<\/p>\n

It could also be framed domestically as a concession forced by the US and international community, undermining Netanyahu\u2019s repeated claims of maintaining Israeli sovereignty and strategic independence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Netanyahu allows a foreign military force into Gaza, he immediately denies himself a large degree of his freedom to operate,\u201d Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said from Berlin. \u201cIdeally, he needs things to remain exactly where they are but without alienating Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Smoke
Smoke rises from an Israeli strike on Gaza\u2019s Bureij refugee camp on October 19, 2025, in one of the near-daily attacks Israel has carried out since the ceasefire went into effect [Eyad Baba\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He wants to resist any progress towards a two-state solution<\/h2>\n

While not explicitly mentioning a two-state solution, the ceasefire\u00a0agreement does include provisions under which Israel and the Palestinians commit to a dialogue towards what it frames as a \u201cpolitical horizon for peaceful and prosperous co-existence\u201d.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu, however, has been arguing against a two-state solution since at least 2015 when he\u00a0campaigned on the issue.<\/p>\n

More recently, at the United Nations in\u00a0September, he branded the decision to recognise a Palestinian state \u201cinsane\u201d and claimed that Israel would not accept the establishment of a Palestinian homeland.<\/p>\n

Israeli ministers have also been at work ensuring that the two-state solution remains a practical impossibility. Israel\u2019s\u00a0plan to establish a series of new settlements severing occupied East Jerusalem \u2013 long considered the future capital of any Palestinian state \u2013 from the West Bank would make the establishment of a feasible state impossible.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just an unfortunate consequence of geography. Announcing the plans for the new settlements in August, Smotrich said the project would \u201cbury the idea of a Palestinian state\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Israeli
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich holds a map near the settlement of Maale Adumim showing a land corridor known as E1, in which Israel plans to build thousands of settler homes and which Smotrich says would \u2018bury the idea of a Palestinian state\u2019 [Menahem Kahana\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A resumption of war would benefit him<\/h2>\n

Netanyahu faces\u00a0numerous domestic threats, from his own corruption trial to the potentially explosive issue of forcing conscription on Israel\u2019s ultra-religious students. There is also the public reckoning he faces for his own failures before and during the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, all of which will fall within a critical election year for the prime minister.<\/p>\n

Each of these challenges risks fracturing his coalition and weakening his hold on power. All of them, however, could be derailed \u2013 or at least politically blurred \u2013 by a new conflict either with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon or possibly even with Iran.<\/p>\n

Renewed fighting would allow him to once more present himself as a wartime leader, limit criticism and rally both his allies and adversaries around the well-worn flag of \u201cnational emergency\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reached the end of his latest trip to the United States and appears to have gained what he wants from President Donald Trump. Trump hailed Netanyahu after their meeting on Monday, calling him a \u201chero\u201d and saying Israel \u2013 and by extension its prime minister \u2013 had \u201clived up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}