So Netanyahu is now negotiating and maneuvering on several fronts at eleven, all of which have a significant effect on the conduct of the war and his own future as prime minister.
His recent warnings to Palestinians in parts of Rafah to move to areas Israel has designated as safe, followed late Monday night by the Israeli military’s seizure of the Gaza side of the Egyptian border, signaled to his far-right government coalition, to Hamas and to the Biden administration that he would continue to prioritize Israel’s interests. More importantly, Israel’s more narrow war Cabinet, which includes senior opposition figures, backed those decisions.
The seizure of the Rafah crossing to Egypt, to try to complete Israel’s control of Gaza’s borders, has, for now, avoided a large-scale and contentious military operation in Rafah itself, which is filled with displaced civilians.
It may signal that Israel is preparing at long last to agree to at least a temporary cease-fire in Gaza, even as the outcome of those negotiations remains uncertain.
“Netanyahu is being pulled in various directions,” with pressure mounting on him to respond, said Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel now at Princeton University.
Foremost is Netanyahu’s desire to avoid new elections, which could mean loss of power and a renewal of the various court cases against him. “Political survival always ranks first in Netanyahu’s calculations,” Kurtzer said.
Then there are the competing pressures on him from “extremists in his own coalition who want to continue the war,” he said, and from the hostages’ families, who want the government to prioritize a cease-fire and a release of more people seized in Israel during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.
Externally, the pressure comes from Biden administration officials and some in Congress “who are losing patience over the humanitarian situation,” he noted. They want to cease-fire and oppose a major onslaught on Rafah. Finally there is “the real, continuing threat of escalation, especially from Hezbollah,” he said.
Here is a closer look at the political, military and diplomatic concerns Netanyahu confronts as he weighs his next steps.
Politics
Netanyahu is desperate to hold together his governing coalition, which has 64 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament, a narrow majority.
His far-right partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, together control 14 seats, and they have vowed to leave the government if the prime minister makes too many concessions and agrees to a cease-fire in Gaza, leaving Hamas to claim victory . They have insisted, as Netanyahu has also done, that the military will move on Rafah.
Gadi Eisenkot, a former general and opposition member of the war Cabinet, accused the two men of “political blackmail” and of standing in the way of the return of at least some hostages.
But new elections would almost certainly produce a new coalition without Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, so Netanyahu has some room to maneuver.
Agreeing to a form of temporary cease-fire in stages, as proposed in the current negotiations, could allow Israel to deal with what it says are the four Hamas battalions in and under Rafah at a much slower pace, over many weeks, especially now that the strip of Gaza along the Egyptian border has been seized.
It would also bring more hostages home—not all of them, but some of the most vulnerable, as well as some who are dead and could be buried by their families. That could help diminish the anti-government rallies often spearheaded by the hostage families.
It would also go some way to pacify President Joe Biden, who could claim a diplomatic victory with a cease-fire, which would also allow much more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, allow more civilians to move to safer areas and even to the north , after they are screened by Israeli troops, and avoid a full-scale attack on Rafah.
“Netanyahu is in no hurry to end the war,” said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator who now leads the US/Middle East Project, a nonprofit policy institute. “He doesn’t want a cease-fire deal that threatens his coalition or his ability to continue the war after a pause. He wants to drag it all out, because once the war is over, what is the excuse for not having new elections?”
Military
Israeli military officials and analysts emphasize that cutting off the smuggling of arms and equipment from Egypt through the tunnels under Rafah is strategically more important to Israel than the Hamas fighters left in Rafah.
Despite Egyptian denials of extensive smuggling into Gaza, Israeli officials believe that much of the extraordinary arsenal and the building supplies that Hamas accumulated in Gaza came through tunnels from Egypt.
“If we end the war without blocking the tunnels, we would enable Hamas or any other terrorist organization on the Strip to rebuild their military capacities,” said Kobi Michael of the Institute for National Security Studies, a research group in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Nitzan Nuriel, a reserve brigadier general and former director of the counterterrorism bureau of the Israeli National Security Council, worked with Netanyahu for several years. “Rafah is important not because of the four Hamas battalions that are still there,” he said. “Rafah is important because the message to the Palestinians who live in Gaza is that Hamas will not be able to control Gaza for good.”
Otherwise, he said, Palestinians in Gaza would “stay afraid of Hamas and therefore will cooperate with Hamas.”
Even a modest operation in Rafah “fits several of Netanyahu’s goals simultaneously,” said Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
