Why Is Trump Threatening to Let Netanyahu Restart the Gaza War?
The U.S. president knows that renewing the fighting will push his regional allies – Qatar, Egypt, Turkey and the UAE – further from his vision of a new Middle East. Israeli officials seem skeptical about his threats
Amir Tibon, Haaretz
01:16 PM • October 17 2025 IDT
In the four days since the release of the Israeli hostages from Gaza, U.S. President Donald Trump has twice implied that the war between Israel and Hamas could be renewed. First, Trump said in a television interview that Israel could send its forces back into Gaza immediately "if I said so."
A day later, he wrote in a social media post that if Hamas continues to "kill people in Gaza," then "we will have no choice but to go in and kill them." The president didn't explain who exactly he meant by "we" and whether that implied that American troops would be sent to fight in the Gaza Strip.
These statements contradict Trump's triumphant celebrations earlier this week and his declarations that the war in Gaza is over and a new day has begun in the Middle East. Trump celebrated the war's end flanked by leaders from all over the Arab and Muslim world, and encouraged them to sign normalization agreements with Israel, declaring that Gaza was no longer an impediment to doing so.
Of course, those leaders will find it extremely difficult to move ahead with normalization of any kind if Israeli tanks once again storm Gaza City and kill civilians there.
Talks for the plan's implementation are taking place between Israel, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, the Palestinian Authority, the European Union and others; there are many layers, from the reopening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt to the stationing of an international peacekeeping force in parts of the Strip. All these efforts will go to waste if the war starts again tomorrow.
Hamas took a gamble by signing Trump's deal, betting that once all the living Israeli hostages are returned from Gaza, Israel will lose its final argument for continuing the war and risk dramatic international isolation if it attacks Gaza again.
It's hard to see any country, apart from Trump's United States, standing by Benjamin Netanyahu if the prime minister chooses to do that, now that Hamas is no longer holding living hostages. The fact that 19 dead
bodies of Israelis and foreigners who were killed and taken on October 7 are still in Gaza, at least some of them in the hands of Hamas, is seen outside of Israel as a problem to be solved through diplomacy, not as a reason to go to war.
Restarting the war and risking soldiers' lives for the return of those bodies would also be a difficult sell in Israel, where an enormous sense of relief has been felt this week. Tens of thousands of reservists have been sent home, the parents of young soldiers are breathing easier knowing that their kids aren't at risk of dying in Gaza's rubble, and communities along the Gaza border can finally focus on their recovery from October 7 without the daily sounds of explosions and gunfire.
This doesn't mean Israelis aren't fully committed to the return of all the dead hostages for a proper burial in Israel and won't support measures that apply more pressure on Hamas to achieve that goal. The Netanyahu government has already approved several actions of that kind, such as limiting the amount of humanitarian aid trucks entering the Strip and delaying the reopening of the Rafah crossing. But those things are still different than restarting the war and sending troops back into the streets of Gaza.
The larger questions have to do with the next phases of Trump's plan, including Hamas' commitment to disarm and Netanyahu's commitment to further withdrawals from Gaza. In the far distance is the issue of Palestinian statehood and the Palestinian Authority's mandate in the Strip.
The answers to these questions all run through Trump's regional allies, without whom last week's agreement never would have been signed – Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and others. The president knows that renewing the war in Gaza will push them further away from his larger vision – and would leave him alone with Netanyahu against the rest of the world.
Haaretz
It was another sucker play by Trump like the attack on Doha. |
