{"id":63976,"date":"2025-10-09T16:30:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T16:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/63976\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T16:30:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T16:30:10","slug":"relief-and-disbelief-greet-ceasefire-announcement-in-israel-israel-palestine-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/63976\/","title":{"rendered":"Relief and disbelief greet ceasefire announcement in Israel | Israel-Palestine conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Across Israeli society, the reaction to the news of a Gaza ceasefire deal has been almost uniform: Joy.<\/p>\n

In Tel Aviv, the families of those taken captive during the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 celebrated on Thursday after the announcement. And a man dressed<\/a> as United States President Donald Trump \u2013 who played a large part in brokering the deal \u2013 carried Israeli and US flags and posed for photographs with smiling passersby.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

Two years of war on Gaza have fractured<\/a> Israeli society. The minority who have openly opposed Israel\u2019s killing of more than 67,000 Palestinians say they have been ostracised, while those who cheered on what experts have confirmed is a genocide have been left angered by growing international condemnation of Israel\u2019s aggression.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cried when I got the news,\u201d Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said from Berlin. \u201cIt\u2019s really big. It\u2019s like there\u2019s a complete emotional unravelling across Israel; it\u2019s like people are decompressing. There\u2019s just massive, massive relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GazaA person wearing a mask depicting US President Donald Trump holds US and Israeli flags after the ceasefire and captives deal declared by Trump, at the so-called Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, on October 9, 2025 [Maya Levin\/AFP]Cautiously optimistic<\/p>\n

For some, the news seems too good to be true, with speculation and nerves turning to how the ceasefire may ultimately unravel, as a deal earlier this year did.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is happy. It\u2019s what we\u2019ve been calling for for two years,\u201d said Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of parliament from the left-wing Hadash-Ta\u2019al party. \u201cI\u2019ve been watching videos from Gaza, television from Tel Aviv showing the families of the hostages: Everyone is happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThough there\u2019s still caution,\u201d she added. \u201cThere\u2019s a feeling that someone, somewhere will find a reason to return to the war. People don\u2019t trust this government \u2013 not just in Gaza, but in Israel, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of that doubt centres on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has previously resisted calls to end the war at every opportunity.<\/p>\n

Accusations from political opponents and captives\u2019 families that he was prolonging the conflict for his own political ends \u2013 to ensure that his coalition holds together \u2013 have persisted throughout the war. Former US President Joe Biden also suggested that may be the case.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s ceasefire does little to remove that suspicion. Netanyahu still faces the prospect of a verdict in his long-running corruption trial<\/a>, an inquiry<\/a> into his own failings before the October 7 attack, as well as the controversy over extending Israel\u2019s military draft<\/a> to its ultra-Orthodox community, whose parties are an important part of Netanyahu\u2019s governing coalition. All of these have been conveniently relegated to secondary concerns while the war on Gaza has continued, but that will change once the fighting ends.<\/p>\n

\"PalestinianPalestinian children celebrate in Khan Younis on October 9, 2025, following news of a new Gaza ceasefire deal [AFP]<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, with elections due by next year, or potentially even earlier, Netanyahu has successes that he can point to, particularly in weakening the Iranian-backed \u201caxis of resistance\u201d in the wider region. Perhaps most notable were the 12-day war with Iran in June, and the decapitation of much of the Lebanese group Hezbollah\u2019s leadership in a war last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cNetanyahu is going to portray this as a victory,\u201d the prime minister\u2019s former aide and political pollster, Mitchell Barak, told Al Jazeera from West Jerusalem. \u201cHe can say he\u2019s achieved everything he wanted to at the start of the war. He\u2019s got the hostages back, he\u2019s destroyed Hamas. On the sidelines of this, he\u2019ll also claim that he used the opportunity to wipe out Hezbollah, weaken Iran and watch over as the Syrian regime fell. He\u2019s reshaped the Middle East, he\u2019ll claim, and removed many, if not all, of the main threats facing Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others in Netanyahu\u2019s far-right coalition already appear ready to oppose the deal. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich<\/a> and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have voiced hostility to the ceasefire, and have previously pledged to leave the government if a deal is passed that they do not agree with. However, what meaningful resistance they can muster \u2013\u00a0 with Israel\u2019s political opposition already pledging to support the government to secure the deal \u2013 is unclear.<\/p>\n

\"GazaA girl wraps herself in a Palestinian flag, after US President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hamas agreed on the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire, in the central Gaza Strip, October 9, 2025 [Mahmoud Issa\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

\u201cHadash and the so-called opposition have all said they\u2019ll support the ceasefire,\u201d Touma-Suleiman said of a mainstream opposition that has, through the last two years, largely backed Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza. \u201cBen-Gvir and Smotrich will make some noise, but they can\u2019t really do much.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hand of Trump<\/p>\n

How much the Israeli public credits Netanyahu, as opposed to Trump, for the ceasefire is unclear.<\/p>\n

The US has been Israel\u2019s staunchest ally amid international criticism of its actions in Gaza. In addition to its blanket backing at the United Nations, reports <\/a>from Brown University\u2019s Costs of War Project released this week confirmed what many long suspected: That the US treasury largely financed Israel\u2019s war on Gaza and its attacks across the region.<\/p>\n

However, for many Israelis, Israel\u2019s failed strike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar and the unified response from Arab states proved a turning point for the US administration and its priorities within the Middle East, and ultimately led to Trump telling Netanyahu that he had to agree to a deal and end the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Trump, allied with this coalition of Muslim and Arab states such as Turkiye and Qatar, probably succeeded in forcing the Israeli government\u2019s hand,\u201d Flashenberg said. \u201cThis could have been reached earlier, which suggests Trump forced it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MarcoSecretary of State Marco Rubio whispers to President Donald Trump after passing him a note believed to say that the ceasefire was \u2018very close\u2019 [Evan Vucci\/AP Photo]The future is unwritten<\/p>\n

\u201cNetanyahu has to complete the first stage,\u201d Touma-Suleiman said of the loosely worded ceasefire plan. \u201cWe know that, but there\u2019s still a lot we don\u2019t know about the second phase.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s still to be negotiated \u2013 and on Israel\u2019s side, those negotiations are going to be led by a government that is probably looking to restart the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, any effort to resume hostilities would unfold against the backdrop of an unpredictable US president who, having sent his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to negotiate the ceasefire, appears heavily invested in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long this will last depends on Trump,\u201d Barak said. \u201cHe uses the presidency as a global bully pulpit. He\u2019s shown he\u2019s ready to do anything, irrespective of the norms, as he writes his own rulebook with new norms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael has always been a critical ally of the US in the Middle East, as well as its most favoured nation, but it\u2019s not really clear any more if Trump particularly cares about critical allies or favoured nations, or even foreign allies in general,\u201d Barak continued. \u201cHe wants peace, and Netanyahu knows that. He knows Trump could really leave him \u2013 and that would be a disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump could walk away, and Netanyahu knows it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Across Israeli society, the reaction to the news of a Gaza ceasefire deal has been almost uniform: Joy.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,54,50,85,46,44,47,43,48],"class_list":["post-63976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-donald-trump","tag-gaza","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63976","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=63976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}