There was one moment in the Knesset speech on the day the war ended that particularly troubled Likud. It happened when the president spontaneously praised Yair Lapid. “He’s a nice guy,” he said to Netanyahu — and then jabbed the prime minister: “You don’t need to be so tough now that the war is over.”
Was this a hint that the president intends, God forbid, to adopt neutrality in the upcoming election campaign?
There are precedents. Netanyahu, as we recall, hung a giant poster of himself with Trump on the side of the Ze’ev Fortress, the Likud HQ, during the 2019 campaign. Yet the American president at the time made sure to invite Netanyahu’s direct rival, Benny Gantz, to the White House as well — much to the fury of the Prime Minister’s Office. Even the most hawkish president on peace and territory, and the friendliest to Netanyahu, preferred to appear above Israeli electoral politics.
The reason is that, then as now, a quiet struggle is taking place inside the White House over Netanyahu. Jared Kushner, for example, is far from an enthusiastic supporter of the prime minister. Steve Witkoff holds an even more negative view of him. One can reasonably assume that the sharp (and in hindsight very inaccurate) briefings against Netanyahu ahead of this week’s meeting in Mar-a-lago came from those quarters. There are powerful figures in the American administration who would very much like to see a different Israeli prime minister — for personal reasons as well as ideological ones.
But even larger parts of the administration — Secretary of State Rubio, Defense Secretary Hegseth, Ambassador Huckabee, and others — remain full-on Likudniks, if not further to the right of it. And where does Trump stand? In polls, he has been classified as “leaning Likud.” The result so far is unequivocal: “With almost any other leader, Israel would not have survived,” he has said repeatedly in front of the cameras at Mar-a-Lago. Netanyahu himself could not have phrased it better. Few understand better than he does the dramatic electoral significance such a statement may carry — or, for that matter, the impact of showing up to receive the Israel Prize on the eve of a campaign launch. After all, someone who pressures for a pardon can also astonish with moves no one anticipates.
Naftali Bennett. Photo: Oren Ben Hakoon
Still, efforts to push Trump away from supporting Netanyahu have not ceased. For example, Naftali Bennett recently hinted that the way to reach the president’s heart is to establish a large political framework, together with Eisenkot and preferably also Lieberman. Someone known for his fondness for “extra large” — everything about him bigger than life, from hotels to signatures — is unlikely to even glance at boutique parties.
Hamas’ plan
Somewhat like in the recent Torah portions, Hamas — like Pharaoh — understands that the party is over. That after the seven good years (or seventeen, in their case), the bad years arrive. To survive, they must change. Like a polar bear entering hibernation, knowing that what matters now is simply staying alive. Hamas, one of the most adaptive organizations in the world, is completing its transition from a governing authority to a guerrilla organization and then into a dormant underground movement.
The transition began in April 2024, when mourning was declared over the destruction of its military wing — its bases, missiles, and leadership. After mourning came acceptance. The goal is singular: Hamas must survive.
Hostages? We’ll return them all and not cause too much trouble. Israel and the U.S. object to certain figures we want to appoint to a committee? Fine — we’ll bring others. Israel tries to provoke us into responding? No problem, we’ll sit quietly. There are 150 operatives in Rafah who could reignite everything? Fine, we’ll give them up. A multinational force? We’ll oppose it at first; if that fails, no big deal — Plan B is that the force won’t enter Gaza but will instead guard the Yellow Line. Do whatever it takes to survive.
Hamas “police officers” on the streets of Gaza after the deal took effect. Photo: Arab networks
All in the name of keeping things quiet. They know Israel has long been addicted to quiet, and they’re not convinced the detox program of the past two years will hold. They’re betting that Trump wants achievements, not noise. So they maneuver indirectly on weapons, work intensively with Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar to keep them on their side. They prefer causing Israel trouble in international forums rather than harming soldiers right now. Raise more money, secure more donations, rebuild quietly.
There is another thing almost completely ignored in Israel: Hamas has been in an internal election period. This is part of its attempt to present itself to the world as a legitimate, democratic movement. Khalil al-Hayya and his camp ran against Khaled Mashal and his faction. It is no coincidence that Mashal was recently filmed delivering a fiery speech that in no way reflects the conciliatory posture of the man at odds with Iran.
Europeans, of course, buy these stories. Americans raise an eyebrow, but want quiet. And Israel, for its part, is currently more focused on Iran and Syria than on Gaza. From Hamas’s perspective, it’s a perfect time to survive.
How do you change that? Through a military operation that uproots the organization’s weapons at the root — certainly not by withdrawing from the Yellow Line. “There is a plan,” Netanyahu said this week in Florida, repeating: “There is a plan.” When will it be implemented, as long as the president still believes in disarmament? On that, the answer was more evasive: “What’s the rush?”
In the mouthpiece of MK Meir Porush — the Haredi equivalent of MK Tally Gotliv — the fast of the Tenth of Tevet, marking the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem, was chosen to issue a stunning threat against the coalition. The disguise was historical analysis.
“Against the backdrop of the worsening situation in the Land of Israel, where yeshiva students whose Torah study is their profession are being arrested by the authorities and tens of thousands of Torah learners are persecuted… HaMevaser reveals, in an exclusive first publication, a shocking historical document attesting to the position of the leaders of the generation prior to the establishment of the state regarding the demands made of the Zionist leadership.”
Every word here was carefully chosen, in the very week when the Council of Torah Sages of Agudat Yisrael convened to decide its position on the draft law. The document in question was a letter sent in 1938 by the president of Agudat Yisrael regarding the UN partition plan. Then as now, the ultra-Orthodox leadership was less concerned with borders and more with what would happen inside them: “As long as the foundations of religion are not guaranteed in the state to be formed, Agudah cannot yet say ‘yes.'”
Avigdor Liberman. Photo: Oren Ben Hakoon
Then came the bombshell that made the headline: “In a private conversation with the Rebbe of Gur… he suggested that it might be proper to pressure the Zionist Organization and perhaps warn them that if religious matters are not properly guaranteed soon, we will be forced to interfere and speak with the Arabs against our will, for religion is more precious to the people of Israel than anything… if we are not assured that the Jewish state will be built on religious foundations, we will be compelled to take steps that will lead to unpleasant consequences.”
Beyond the threat — issued on the fast of the Tenth of Tevet — to breach the walls before the enemy, the ending is well known: they did not turn to the Arabs, the ultra-Orthodox did not leave the country en masse after the recent draft laws, and even Porush, who theatrically tore up the draft bill in committee, is now mentioned as someone unlikely to vote against it.
A fierce battle is underway over the Council’s vote. Numerically, if all four representatives vote against the law, it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, for the coalition to pass it. Substantively, “Degel HaTorah” will find it very hard to remain alone. Paradoxically, those who believe the law entrenches draft evasion are now hoping for a majority from those convinced it is a decree of religious persecution — to the point that perhaps it would be better if there were no state at all.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, remains determined to pass the law. He still wants elections as late as possible — in September 2026.
The start of a new civil year is a good time to ask why almost no one uses the term “the Twenties” to describe the wild decade we have just crossed the midpoint of. Perhaps the phrase still conjures images for older generations of trench coats, silent films, and the Weimar Republic.
In any case, this week marked the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Local historians will likely define its politics as the era of the death throes of the Israeli left.
On New Year’s Eve twenty-five years ago, Ehud Barak was prime minister, Yossi Beilin a senior minister, Meretz a central coalition partner, and the main agenda — after a full withdrawal from Lebanon — was negotiations toward full withdrawal from the Golan and near-total withdrawal from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. A quarter century later, no prime minister who defines himself as left-wing has been elected; the “Labor” and “Meretz” brands have vanished; and the IDF holds extensive territory in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza.
Only six Knesset members from that era remain. But with all due respect to Gafni, Tibi, Porush, Edelstein, and even Israel Katz, this quarter-century increasingly looks like the story of a love–hate triangle among three figures who have shaped the right and the state itself — and who are still with us: Avigdor Lieberman, Aryeh Deri, and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Had the three known how to live in peace, Israeli politics would have been a dull affair with a predictable ending for more than a decade. The left would have been marginal, and the center a fifth wheel in right-wing governments.
But the complex relationship among the three inadvertently produced an entirely new political system. In the early 2000s, Shas sat in a left-wing government, Deri was in prison, Netanyahu was in business, and Lieberman was synonymous with the far-right fringe. Today, Shas is firmly right-wing, Deri is the number-one partner, Netanyahu is allied with the ultra-Orthodox, and Lieberman is as far from the coalition as possible.
The most consequential political move of the past quarter-century was Lieberman’s dramatic decision in May 2019 to block the formation of a government and drag the entire country into a cycle of elections that, in some sense, has never truly ended.
Was it driven by growing distance from the ultra-Orthodox and the religious drift of Likud? Or by the quotes attributed to Lieberman at the time, published by Dana Weiss: “Netanyahu crossed every red line. In 2019, seven complaints were filed against me and my children with the police, prosecutors, and tax authorities. I am convinced Netanyahu was behind all of it. In my moral code, that is a sin for which there is no forgiveness, not even on Yom Kippur. Stop sending emissaries on Likud’s behalf — the idea that I’ll sit with Netanyahu is a hopeless illusion.”
An intriguing question — assuming one can unscramble yolk and white after they’ve been turned into an omelet. Every politician mixes personal and ideological motives. In any case, what does it matter now, after a quarter million voters followed Lieberman into partnership with Yair Lapid and Yair Golan on a civic platform rather than with Goldknopf and Smotrich on a nationalist one?
The more important, forward-looking question is this: assuming most polls prove accurate, and assuming this will indeed be Netanyahu’s final term, could Lieberman nevertheless return to the bloc and almost automatically take a leading position in the race to head the right the day after? Lieberman himself insists there is no chance whatsoever. But his associates are fiercely divided. Some are convinced — genuinely — that he will return, because a promising future on the right is preferable to donating mandates to yet another fragile government dependent on the left and perhaps the Arabs. And there are those who think that the man who once stunned everyone might yet do so again — in the opposite direction.
