Ever since the war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7, 2023, the question of what happens on “the day after” in Gaza has loomed large. Rarely have two sides been less enthusiastic about a ceasefire, but neither of them sees any viable alternatives at the moment besides agreeing with the plan put forth by President Donald Trump and seeing what happens.
But the unfolding ceasefire also brings to the forefront pertinent questions about what comes next with regard to Israeli domestic politics.
Netanyahu was effectively forced by this triple-combination of pressure from Trump, the military and public opinion into accepting the new ceasefire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the past two years has acted as though the best way to remain in power is to continue the war. And he does, indeed, need to remain in power for personal and political imperatives, but a combination of internal and external pressures has forced a reconsideration, leading to the current ceasefire.
Now, two “swords of Damocles” hang over Netanyahu’s head, one personal and the other political.
On the personal level, he is being prosecuted on criminal corruption charges and potentially faces prison. Netanyahu is expected to testify in the trial, which has been going since 2020, on Wednesday. Since the start of the war in 2023, trial hearings have been repeatedly delayed at Netanyahu’s lawyers’ requests on national security grounds.
Politically, Netanyahu and many other senior officials naturally dread the inevitable inquiry commission into the Oct. 7 attack. Virtually all Israeli defensive systems failed abysmally. The intelligence failure alone is extraordinary, based on the assumption that Hamas was content ruling Gaza. Israeli soldiers and civilians paid with their lives for this smug colonial overconfidence.
Netanyahu has acted as though the best way to postpone his trial and an inquiry was to continue the war. He insisted on “total victory” over Hamas. But that nebulous goal, still not achieved, is sufficiently open-ended to carry on fighting indefinitely.
Throughout the war, the prime minister has been in an uncomfortable alliance with two extremist Cabinet colleagues, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. They are enthusiastic advocates of the Gaza war, and they endorsed expelling the Palestinians and resettling northern Gaza. They are also among the most ardent proponents of immediately annexing the West Bank and have frequently threatened to resign — theoretically bringing down the government — over relatively dovish initiatives such as the current cease fire.
But Netanyahu has faced pressure from the military — which has long demanded a coherent strategic goal after having routinely suffered casualties to Hamas’ shoestring but effective insurgency. And there’s no lack of potential Hamas recruits among the bereaved, impoverished and radicalized youth in Gaza, many willing to die. The Israel Defense Forces has apparently concluded there’s little, if anything, worth fighting over other than for neutralizing Hamas’ remaining tunnels.
The Israeli public, too, provided major pressure for ending the war. Some protesters were driven more by freeing hostages, while others are more focused on simply ending the conflict.
But these two groups often, and increasingly, overlap. And ultimately, Netanyahu was effectively forced by this triple-combination of pressure from Trump, the military and public opinion into accepting the new ceasefire.
When the White House sides with the Israeli military and protesters, Netanyahu has little choice but to cooperate.
Hamas, too, has been effectively forced to concede and cooperate (at least for now). It was heavily pushed to agree to Trump’s proposal by its last remaining allies, Turkey and Qatar, cut off from Iranian support because of the Turkish-engineered downfall of the Assad dictatorship in Syria, confronted by a united Arab world that is completely fed up with the war and surrounded by an utterly exhausted and desperate population of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza. Its small but militant insurgency remains effective at routinely killing Israeli soldiers, but in every other way Hamas’ situation is as dire as ever.
When the White House sides with the Israeli military and protesters, Netanyahu has little choice but to cooperate. That happened between mid-January and mid-March when a ceasefire negotiated by former President Joe Biden secured the release of 20 living hostages and several deceased hostages. However, after having implemented the first phase of Biden’s three-phase plan, Netanyahu ended the calm on March 17 with a massive barrage that killed over 400 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
Trump didn’t intervene in March to insist on the continuation of the Biden plan, which held that negotiations would continue if both sides were refraining from attacks. However, given the political equation outlined above, Netanyahu was eager to return to the fray, and the war resumed. This time, Netanyahu was effectively forced into accepting the new ceasefire. Trump’s enthusiasm for his own plan and fury about Israel’s attack on Qatar — along with the Israeli public’s demands for ending the increasingly unpopular war, as well as intensive pressure from his own military commanders — left him with no real alternatives. With Hamas finally saying “yes,” even to unfavorable terms, all the other pressure is on Netanyahu. The virtually inevitable Israeli elections next year have apparently convinced Netanyahu that his interests are best served by implementing the ceasefire for now and campaigning without major combat ongoing in Gaza. Meanwhile, the extremist ministers’ bluff was called already over the Biden plan in January, when, despite their threats, they failed to resign from Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. Once again, they blustered but remained in the Cabinet. Even if they left, however, Netanyahu could probably find other center-right Knesset members who would replace them, primarily to protect the ceasefire. Netanyahu’s political stock rebounded significantly this year after Israel’s military successes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the bombing attacks that did considerable damage to Iran’s nuclear program. He hasn’t fully redeemed himself in the eyes of the Israeli people from the failures of Oct. 7, but many in Israel seem to have re-evaluated him as a more trustworthy and effective wartime leader. The secret of Netanyahu’s success in the Israeli system hasn’t primarily rested on being the first choice among most Israelis. Rather, he has consistently, and often brilliantly, maneuvered to ensure that he is an acceptable second, or even third, choice for enough Israelis to time and again deliver him sufficient support in the Knesset to survive no-confidence votes and to emerge from elections still in power. If the ceasefire holds and the war truly ends, Netanyahu loses his primary reason for remaining in power. For now, implementing the Trump ceasefire seems to be Netanyahu’s best bet going into 2026. However, if the ceasefire holds and the war truly ends, Netanyahu loses his primary reason for remaining in power. But if Netanyahu remains prime minister after the next election, then the pressures that led him to continue the war over the past two years may again convince him that war is his most reliable political ally. The next scheduled elections are a little more than a year from now, on Oct. 27, 2026, and they could come even sooner. If he hasn’t continued to successfully postpone his trial and an inquiry commission into the Oct. 7 attack, Israelis may decide it’s time for Bibi to finally face accountability.
Hussein Ibish
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. 
