Standing at the Knesset rostrum on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shrugged off any concerns that control over the future of Gaza might be slipping from Israel’s grasp.

Days earlier, the White House had announced that it was moving ahead with the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza, and invitations were zooming around the world for the Board of Peace and Gaza Executive Board, which will oversee the Strip’s transition away from Hamas rule and the disarmament of the terror group.

“What is phase two?” Netanyahu asked rhetorically. “Phase two says something simple — Hamas will be disarmed, and Gaza will be demilitarized.”

“We are sticking to those goals, and they will be achieved,” he pledged, “either the easy way, or the hard way.”

Among those slated to sit on the Gaza Executive Board, which looks to be a decisive body determining what happens moving forward in the war-torn Strip, are Israel’s regional rivals and close Trump friends Turkey and Qatar.

On Saturday night, Netanyahu’s office publicly condemned the inclusion of Ankara and Doha.

But in the Knesset, Netanyahu downplayed the significance of having the two Hamas-backing countries on the panel, insisting rather disingenuously that Qatar and Turkey “are barely members of an advisory committee of one of the three commissions, in which they don’t have any authority or any influence or any soldiers.”

Netanyahu finds himself in a difficult bind. The prime minister recognizes that the coming stage of Trump’s plan, with hostile actors in key roles, is not a recipe for success. It might even be the first stage of Hamas’s rehabilitation, not its demise.

At the same time, he can’t oppose the plan. Ever since it became clear that Trump was returning to the White House, Netanyahu has embraced the president and his policies, including the 20-point vision for Gaza. The Saturday night message was the first direct criticism of a Trump policy all year, but he is not about to try to get Trump to overturn his decision or suspend the plan’s advancement.

By going along with Trump, Netanyahu is taking a gamble, and not an outrageous one. He is as aware as any that the president’s elaborate plans for decision-making bodies and peacekeeping forces for Gaza are unlikely to rid the world of Hamas or protect Israel.

But the compromise is worth it to the premier in order to maintain his direct line to the Oval Office, where crucial decisions about Hamas and Israel’s freedom of action to confront it are being made.

If he’s wrong, however, and Trump and his senior advisers ice him out in favor of the Board of Peace project, then Hamas will be sticking around to threaten the future of Israel, and Netanyahu’s own political fortunes will be imperiled as well.

For the two difficult years between the invasion of southern Israel by Hamas and the ceasefire Trump announced in October, Netanyahu repeatedly made the case that freeing the hostages held in Gaza and defeating Hamas were not mutually exclusive war aims.

He faced plenty of angry opposition to that claim, both domestic and international. Protesters at weekly marches in Tel Aviv insisted that rescuing the hostages was the more urgent task and that decapitating Hamas could come after. Netanyahu’s political allies pushed the idea that taking out Hamas should be the main goal.

Throughout the war that broke out on October 7, 2023, Netanyahu managed to make progress — albeit in lurching, uneven steps — on both badly weakening Hamas and getting the majority of the hostages home.

Yet, it seemed like the........

© The Times of Israel