In announcing he was calling off strikes on Iran, US President Donald Trump said \u201cIsrael joins me in this commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is yet to comment \u2014 and that\u2019s probably not surprising.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu was in the Oval Office as recently as Tuesday<\/a> and might have hoped he had convinced the fickle US president of Israel\u2019s arguments on both Iran and Gaza<\/a>. But the start of the working week in Israel finds its leader grappling with setbacks in both areas.<\/p>\n Netanyahu is desperate for the US to resume its military campaign against Iran in earnest.<\/p>\n Convincing Washington to launch a major war was a triumph for the Israeli leader. But from Netanyahu\u2019s perspective, and that of much of the Israeli public, it ended prematurely.<\/p>\n Israel is less concerned about energy prices and the freedom of shipping companies to move oil out of the Persian Gulf. In Israel, it\u2019s Iran\u2019s nuclear program and the regime behind it that matters.<\/p>\n They both look secure, and that makes Netanyahu vulnerable as the country moves to a general election in under three months\u2019 time.<\/p>\n On Gaza, Netanyahu\u2019s office was already signalling concerns ahead of Trump\u2019s declaration Thursday evening that Hamas had agreed to disarm, in what the US leader called a \u201cmonumental step towards lasting peace and security.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel believes Washington is too quick to want a win and too ready to reach accommodations with Hamas to that end. Netanyahu wants no restrictions on Israel\u2019s freedom to do what it wants in Gaza, and here, too, Israeli public opinion is largely behind him.<\/p>\n Netanyahu will be keen to delay, or indeed scuttle if he can, any US-led efforts to halt strikes on Gaza or make any significant withdrawals, even if any pullbacks are to positions still well inside the enclave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In announcing he was calling off strikes on Iran, US President Donald Trump said \u201cIsrael joins me in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,54,85,87,117780,46,58196,43,3336,2488,208,97725,2201],"class_list":["post-571864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-donald-trump","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-iran-war","tag-israel","tag-israeli-prime-minister","tag-news","tag-tehran","tag-trump-administration","tag-us","tag-us-president","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}