Netanyahu’s sabotage of the Gaza talks is a humiliation for the Trump administration

Protesters near the White House during Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, July 2025

Amir Tibon writes in Haaretz on 13 July 2025:

In the week leading up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, senior Trump administration officials held several meetings with the families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

While the contents of those meetings weren’t leaked, brief official statements released with the administration’s approval emphasized how important it was for President Trump and his team to secure a deal in Gaza, end the war, and bring the hostages home.

Though vague and lacking in concrete details, the statements were enough for many in the media, both in Israel and the U.S., to conclude that this time, Trump meant business. The expectation was that when Netanyahu arrived in Washington, he would face real pressure to end the war, secure the release of hostages, and sign on to the post-war plan proposed by America’s Arab allies.

The belief that Trump genuinely wanted a deal was the main source of optimism surrounding Netanyahu’s trip. After all, how could Netanyahu say no to Trump – less than a month after the U.S. president ordered a strike on Iran’s nuclear sites?

But that optimism proved unfounded. Netanyahu spent nearly a week in Washington, including two extended meetings with Trump. Yet by the time the Israeli prime minister left the city, negotiations to end the war and save the hostages were no closer to resolution than before his arrival.

Netanyahu continues to insist on terms he knows Hamas will reject, thereby prolonging the war, extending the suffering of hostages, and ultimately humiliating the Trump administration, which now appears ineffective in its efforts to broker a ceasefire.

These facts have been evident for some time and were recently reinforced by a detailed New York Times investigation into Netanyahu’s deliberate sacrifice of the hostages to preserve his far-right coalition. Rather than pursue proposals offering the release of all hostages in exchange for ending the war, Netanyahu has consistently pushed for partial deals and temporary ceasefires. Worse, he has actively sabotaged even the partial, temporary deals that the U.S. has carefully constructed to accommodate his demands.

After dragging the Trump administration into backing a partial deal that would leave half the hostages in Hamas custody for months to come, Netanyahu began briefing both Israeli and American media that he intends to resume the war once the ceasefire ends.

He did so knowing this would harden Hamas’s stance and delay any deal. For the Gaza-based terror group, the point of a temporary deal is to use the ceasefire as a step toward a full end-of-war agreement.

The bigger question is why Trump – like Joe Biden before him – is allowing this to continue. Biden spent months upon months on futile negotiations with Netanyahu, always ending at the same impasse: his team would adopt Netanyahu’s positions, express surprise when Hamas rejected them, and meanwhile Netanyahu would work to convince Hamas there was no point in making a deal, because Israel would restart the war even if the last hostage were returned.

Now, Netanyahu is playing the same game with Trump and his foreign policy team. They have conceded to his demands, instead of acting on what Trump has publicly stated he wants: to bring all the hostages home and end the “brutal war in Gaza.” Even the partial and temporary “Witkoff proposal” – crafted specifically to accommodate Netanyahu – is being sabotaged by the prime minister before our eyes.

Until Trump and Witkoff decide that they’ve had enough, and put an end to this political farce and humiliation, the hostages will continue to suffer and languish in the tunnels; Israeli soldiers will continue to die in a futile forever war; and Gaza will remain a devastated killing field with no future.

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