The plan makes no mention of the West Bank, home to more than 2.5 million Palestinians. Israeli settlements there have increasingly encroached on Palestinian areas, with approval from Netanyahu’s far-right allies. Still, the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, has supported the Trump plan. It said it would carry out internal reforms to facilitate “a modern, democratic, and nonmilitarized Palestinian state” that would include new elections and allow the “peaceful transfer of power.” Those promises, however, have been made in earlier peace initiatives, with little impact. The Palestinian Authority also vowed to end the practice of financially rewarding families of those who are involved in, or die in, conflict with Israel.
Netanyahu’s polite appearance at the White House on Monday made for a stunning contrast with the speech he had given only three days earlier at the United Nations, where most of the delegations walked out of the General Assembly Hall in protest. In a long-winded rant, the Prime Minister had railed at Britain, France, Canada, and Australia for formally recognizing a Palestinian state. The four governments, long-standing allies of Israel, had just joined more than a hundred and fifty other U.N. members who support a two-state solution. Netanyahu called them all “weak-kneed leaders who appease evil.” He charged, “Astoundingly, as we fight the terrorists who murdered many of your citizens, you are fighting us. You condemn us. You embargo us. And you wage political and legal warfare.” The message is that “murdering Jews pays off.” Israel, he pledged, would not allow them “to shove a terror state down our throats.”
On Monday, however, Netanyahu welcomed the Trump plan, which calls for “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people,” though with no time frame or deadline. At their joint appearance, he said, “We’re going to open possibilities that nobody even dreamed of.” The Prime Minister may be playing along with Trump for now, as he has with other Administrations, Ben-Ami told me. “If there’s one constant over thirty years of U.S. dealings with Netanyahu, it is that nothing is ever final, nothing can be accepted at face value,” he said.
Netanyahu is almost certainly aware that American public support for Israel is declining. In a Quinnipiac poll released last week, forty-seven per cent of respondents still say support for Israel is in the U.S. national interest—but that is a significant drop from sixty-nine per cent in the aftermath of October 7th. (Also in last week’s poll: only twenty-one per cent of Americans have a favorable view of Netanyahu.) Another new survey, by the Times and Siena University, found that more Americans side with Palestinians than with Israel—a first. In a seismic shift, a majority also oppose sending more aid to Israel, long the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East.
The biggest long-term question for Israel is what Iran does next. The two nations engaged in a twelve-day war, in June, during which Israel assassinated senior Iranian military leaders and nuclear specialists. The U.S. also launched airstrikes on three of Iran’s most important nuclear facilities. At the press conference, Trump pondered whether Iran might join other Muslim countries in embracing his Gaza peace plan. “We hope we’re going to be able to get along with Iran,” he told reporters. “I think they’re going to be open to it. I really believe that.”
The prospect seemed highly unlikely. In his own appearance at the U.N. General Assembly last week, the Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, condemned “savage aggression” by Israel and the U.S. during the twelve-day war, in “flagrant contravention” of international law and on the eve of scheduled diplomacy between Tehran and Washington. He separately lashed out at Britain, France, and Germany for triggering so-called snapback sanctions over Tehran’s failure to compromise on its nuclear program. The sanctions will further hobble Iran’s oil and banking sectors. They also require U.N. members to freeze Iran’s foreign assets, end arms deals, and cut off major revenue streams.
In a meeting with media and think-tank experts, on Friday, Pezeshkian claimed that Israel and the U.S. intended to “topple” the theocracy. “They thought that after a few assassinations and bombs, people would take to the streets and end things,” he said. Pezeshkian insisted that a fatwa by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had long ago forbidden Iran from making a nuclear bomb. “We are not allowed under our religion to build nuclear weapons facilities,” he told us. If Tehran had sought nuclear weapons, “we would have gotten them by now.”
Yet, in July, Tehran enacted a new law suspending coöperation with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. Two weeks ago, a public letter from seventy-one members of parliament, roughly a quarter of the unicameral body, argued that Khamenei’s edict banned the use of nuclear weapons but did not forbid building or stockpiling them as deterrents.
The snapback sanctions on Iran went into effect on Sunday morning. They marked a formal end to the hard-bartered negotiations, led by the Obama Administration, that produced the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action a decade ago. The snapback provision was designed to allow any of the six world powers that brokered the deal to demand that sanctions be reimposed if Tehran violated its requirements. But the provision had an expiration date—on October 18th of this year—which was why the Europeans invoked it.
Timing may have played a role in Trump’s Gaza plan, too. The President has often and publicly lobbied for the Nobel Peace Prize. The White House recently issued a list of leaders and governments that support him. The prize is scheduled to be awarded on October 10th. ♦
