Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent statements, made in an interview with Fox News last Thursday and in two press conferences on Sunday, have caused a major uproar. He has been condemned by most Western governments, including the German government (a remarkable rarity), all of whom blame him for announcing his intention to complete control of the Gaza Strip by occupying the remaining populated built-up areas, from Gaza City to Deir al-Balah. Hypocritical cries of condemnation have risen, warning Netanyahu that this project will lead to massive displacement and a large number of deaths, as if the genocide and displacement perpetrated by the Zionist army over the past 22 months, and supported during several months by the same Western governments that are blaming Netanyahu today, were not already worse than what he is promising now.

The Israeli prime minister was certainly surprised by the wide condemnation of his statements, prompting him to make numerous media appearances to clarify what he perceived as a misunderstanding. Ironically, announcements he initially made to reassure Arab and Western governments have provoked a storm in his face, whereas he had intended them as a declaration of his intention to pave the way for a settlement. His ultraright Zionist partners in government realized this well and denounced his position, threatening to dissolve the coalition and provoke new parliamentary elections. This time, Bezalel Smotrich himself – who refused to follow the example of his friend Itamar Ben-Gvir when the latter withdrew temporarily from the government at the beginning of this year in protest against the truce that went into effect in the Gaza Strip on the eve of Donald Trump’s return to the White House – declared last Sunday that he had “lost faith that the prime minister is able and wants to lead the IDF to a decisive victory”. He added, “From my perspective we can stop everything and let the people decide”.

What, then, is new in Netanyahu’s recent announcements? It is certainly not the declaration of his intention to complete the occupation of the Gaza Strip and displace its population, a process that has been underway for more than 22 months in full view of everyone. It is rather his clear statement, for the first time since the beginning of the genocidal war, that he does not intend to permanently occupy the Gaza Strip in its entirety and annex it to Israel. Instead, he emphasized that his goal is to complete full control over the Strip as a prelude to ending the war on the basis of disarming Hamas and turning Gaza into a demilitarized zone in which Gazans are subject to a provisional, non-Israeli “civilian” authority willing to coexist in peace with Israel, provided it is neither Hamas nor the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA). This would involve Israel retaining security control over the Strip, including the permanent deployment of its armed forces along strategic axes and in select areas, while “Arab forces” would be responsible for maintaining security in populated areas under the interim Palestinian authority.

The truth is that this scenario is certainly more in line with the wishes of the Arab states and most Western states than the scenario preferred by the ultraright Zionist movement, which is to displace most of the Gazans from most of the Gaza Strip and annex it, as happened in the 1948 Nakba with most of the Palestinian territories between the river and the sea. The “day after” scenario that is supported by the Arab states and most Western governments, was recently described in the declaration issued by countries that met at the United Nations headquarters in New York at the end of last month, at the invitation of France and the Saudi kingdom. This declaration, which was endorsed by the Arab League and the European Union, in addition to several individual Arab and European states, including Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Turkey, as well as a few countries from other parts of the world, praised the efforts of “Egypt, Qatar, and the United States” to find a settlement that would end the ongoing war, along conditions that include the stipulation that “Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority”.

Al-Quds Al-Arabi’s correspondent reported what follows about the talks scheduled to be held on the day this article is written: “The [Egyptian-Qatari] proposal that the Hamas delegation is supposed to discuss in Cairo includes freezing the resistance’s weapons, Hamas’s complete relinquishment of control over the Gaza Strip, and its release of all Israeli detainees in a single batch, in exchange for a complete end to the war and the commencement of reconstruction in the Gaza Strip. It also includes the formation of an Arab-Palestinian committee to assume control and govern the Gaza Strip until a full-fledged Palestinian administration, with Palestinian security personnel, is qualified to fulfil this role.” (Tamer Hendawi, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 12 August 2025).

The main disagreement between the Euro-Arab project and what Netanyahu announced is that the project stipulates the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the entire Gaza Strip and the transfer of its control to the Ramallah PA. While the distance between the two approaches – Euro-Arab and Israeli – may seem long, Netanyahu’s recent statements have in fact narrowed it. In doing so, he is paving the way for a compromise that Washington will seek to impose on everyone, one that will certainly respond to the new conditions set by Netanyahu more than to the conditions set out in the New York Declaration (see “Trump, Netanyahu, and the Reordering of the Middle East”, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 8 July 2025). In doing so, Netanyahu is also paving the way for imposing his vision on his ultraright allies, once again invoking US pressure.

Gilbert Achcar