Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza on terms he’d previously refused, including an Israeli withdrawal from the strategically desirable Philadelphi Corridor along the border with Egypt. Why the reversal? Pressure from President Donald Trump to end the war before his inauguration appears to have played a decisive role.
Netanyahu’s about-face raises the question: What favors might the Israeli leader hope to extract from Trump in exchange for accepting the deal?
There are many possible answers—a green light to annex the West Bank, for example, or support for Israel to incorporate Syrian territory it has occupied since President Bashar Assad’s fall. (Neither would serve U.S. interests, by the way.)
But the most dangerous favor, by far, would be U.S. assistance in bombing Iranian nuclear sites—or even threatening to do so in a new campaign of diplomatic coercion.
For months, Israel has threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear program and sought U.S. help to do it. President Joe Biden wisely avoided that course. The new Trump administration, however, seems much keener on wielding U.S. military power to coerce the Iranians into abandoning their nuclear ambitions.
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