The willingness of Netanyahu to deal at the last moment under pressure from Trump – defying far-right members of his coalition including Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – has not been lost on Israeli commentators.
“I ask myself where did all the obstacles go?” wrote Ben Caspit in the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv. “All the conditions? All the ridiculous spins that were thrown out by the leader and were echoed by his mouthpieces?
“And what about the Philadelphi corridor [on the border with Egypt]? All of the obstacles that emerged at decisive moments in the negotiations, all of the statements that were issued, including several that were issued during the Sabbath, about how Israel would never leave, never stop, never surrender and never give in?”
My assumption about the world is that Israel will resume killing Gazans en masse within 3-6 months, and potentially much sooner than that, and will not stop completely for quite some time. We’ll see whether that prediction is profoundly wrong. Actually, I think it is better than even odds that the Gaza Strip as a Palestinian entity will no longer exist by the end of Trump’s term.
I’ll be absolutely glad to be wrong if that turns out not to be that case, of course. It’s hard to predict the future. I still don’t plan to give Trump credit for achieving this cease-fire, because he is incredibly cruel, racist against Arabs, and also so mentally incapable of successful diplomacy or geopolitics that it seems silly to talk about. It’s truly bizarre that The Guardian is attempting to credit him for this, saying things like that nonsense about “dictation pace,” irrespective of the progress on the cease-fire.
I definitely think that it’s possible that Netanyahu wanted to stall the cease-fire until the lack of one had hurt the Democrats in the election, because Trump will be a much more friendly partner to him even than Biden was, and Biden was a war criminal for his partnership with Netanyahu. Netanyahu is not a moron, and he sure does like killing Palestinians, and I see no reason to think Trump has any desire to stand in his way.
I’m aware that The Guardian is traditionally left-leaning and reliable. They seem to be 99% sensible stories and then 1% total weird bullshit like this. For some reason, the topic of the weird bullshit is almost always Trump- or Russia-related. I don’t have any particular vast improbable conspiracy to explain why that is, I have simply noticed the pattern and been alarmed by it.
I don’t think that believing Trump is a moron, and reacting with alarm and disbelief to a story that paints him as a skilled and fast-talking diplomat, means I am trapped in a bubble. I think that it means that I am, as you say, grounded in reality.