Benjamin Netanyahu has hailed the prospective Gaza ceasefire and hostage release as a “great day” and triumph for his diplomatic and military strategy after two years of war. But it may yet spell the beginning of the end of his premiership.
While virtually all Israeli society has rallied around the US-brokered deal, the prime minister’s far-right coalition partners voiced opposition to a plan that will require Israel to release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners from its jails, 250 of whom are serving life-sentences on terror-related charges.
More worrying for Israeli ultranationalists — who have long dreamt of annexing Gaza, emptying it of Palestinians and building Jewish settlements — the agreement will require a permanent end to the devastating campaign without the full “destruction” of Hamas, alongside a commitment not to occupy the territory.
For Netanyahu, who has repeatedly been accused of prolonging the war to appease his far-right political bedfellows, this threatens the support he has depended on to keep his government intact since Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack triggered the conflict.
“God forbid” there should be a “hostage [release] in exchange for stopping the war, as Hamas thinks and boasts”, Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, wrote on X on Thursday.
The measure passed comfortably in Israel’s full cabinet early on Friday morning, despite opposition from Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party. Tellingly, while both men voted against the deal neither has yet to resign in protest.
Ben-Gvir only said in a statement before the vote that if in future “Hamas rule is not dismantled . . . Jewish Power will dismantle the government”.
Such hedging is thanks in part to Netanyahu’s deliberate obfuscation over what the Gaza deal entails.
While Donald Trump’s 20-point plan envisions a comprehensive deal for a full halt to the conflict and wider “peace in the Middle East”, Netanyahu has insisted that only the “first phase” of the agreement has been agreed — a hostage-for-prisoner release and partial Israeli military redeployment — and nothing more.
Future elements of the plan as envisioned by the US president — which include a full Israeli withdrawal, Hamas’s disarmament and an alternative committee of international actors and Palestinians to run the strip — have yet to be negotiated.
“The real question is: will anyone say this is the end of the war?” one Israeli opposition official said. “So long as Netanyahu dangles the promise of going back to war, then there is no point for Smotrich and Ben-Gvir to bring down the government.”
But in a sign of possible future political trouble, the rightwing Gvura forum, which represents families of fallen soldiers, welcomed the return of the hostages but said after their release “Israel must immediately continue to strike Hamas and its leaders until its complete elimination”.
“The prime minister has made commitments time and time again,” the forum said.
Trump, Netanyahu’s most important international ally, has made clear in recent weeks that his patience with the Gaza war was running thin and sought to end it — pressure to which the Israeli premier had to respond.
But those close to Netanyahu argue that he himself was now ready to bring the war to some kind of conclusion, even if it means losing his coalition and heading to early elections.
“The timing was appropriate to do an ‘exit’ now,” said Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist who worked with Netanyahu in the past. He highlighted the Israeli strikes on Iran last summer, the potential of future normalisation deals with countries such as Saudi Arabia and the spectre of Trump coming to Israel this weekend.
“Netanyahu will have to pay a price [for the Gaza deal]. It’s not ‘total victory’, true,” he said, adding that — with a vote due by October 2026 at the latest — the country was entering an election year in any case.
Opposition leaders, who issued statements in support of the deal, were like most Israelis still waiting to see whether any initial agreement led to a genuine “second phase” that would actually end the war — and with it, perhaps, the end of Netanyahu’s coalition and opportunity for power.
“March 2026 is the best bet [for an election], but Netanyahu could try to stretch this for as long as possible, up to June of next year,” the opposition official said.
But as Israelis across much of the political spectrum celebrated the deal on Thursday, one thing seemed clear: the most popular politician in Israel is now Donald Trump.
The relatives of hostages still held by Hamas, who gathered weeping and cheering with joy at Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square in the early hours of Thursday, issued a statement expressing “deepest gratitude” to the US president for having “given us back what we thought we had lost forever”. There was no reference to their own prime minister.
Yet the very fact that Netanyahu is still in power, retains Trump’s support and has presided over two years of war in which regional foes have been decimated might yet work in the prime minister’s favour — especially if elections are, in fact, looming.
“There’s no better campaigner for Netanyahu than Trump. His address to [parliament] this Sunday will be the start of the election campaign,” Shtrauchler said. “You need to use what you have.”
Asked on Thursday night whether he was worried about Netanyahu’s political future in the wake of the Gaza deal, Trump said: “Look, that’s politics . . . I think he’s very popular . . . And he’s much more popular today than he was.”
Additional reporting by Abigail Hauslohner in Washington
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