Post #4737

Netanyahu Meets Trump: Gaza Is at Stake Over Again 🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣ Netanyahu has been prime minister of Israel for so long that nearly everyone knows how he governs. He delays decisions. He keeps options open for as long as possible and creates new ones whenever he can. He wears down, outwaits and outlasts his adversaries — as well as his ostensible allies. He turns crises — including some of his own creation — into opportunities he can defuse, for a price. But events are lining up in a way that may tax even his well-documented ability to stretch out tough decisions and shape them to his advantage. Netanyahu’s criminal trial on charges of bribery and fraud is inexorably advancing. Trump’s peace plan for Gaza is inching along toward a difficult Phase 2, and tensions are building with the White House over Israel’s actions in Syria and Lebanon. The pressure on him is mounting from every direction. That includes from the Israeli right, Netanyahu’s political base, which is agitating for him to pursue annexation of the Israeli-occupied West Bank despite Trump’s warnings that doing so would trigger a harsh U.S. response. On each of these fronts, 2026 is shaping up as a momentous year for Mr. Netanyahu, 76, and for the country he has represented for the better part of three decades. He is almost certainly going to have to make a series of decisions with great consequence — for Israeli society and security, for Palestinians, and for the broader Middle East. As he prepares to meet Trump in Florida on Monday, and as Israel awaits an election at some point in 2026, here is a look at some of his pivotal choices ahead. If he wants to maintain his decades-old political alliance with Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, one of Netanyahu’s first tasks is to try to meet its demand for a law granting yeshiva students a new exemption from the draft, after an old exemption expired and the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that they were legally obligated to serve. A new exemption would be wildly unpopular with the vast majority of Israelis, who have been exhausted by the Gaza war’s demands on conscripts and reservists alike over the past two years. If Parliament does not enact the exemption, his government could collapse, precipitating elections early next year. Analysts say Netanyahu wants to delay elections for as long as possible, hoping that his standing in the polls will improve the further Israel gets from the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which happened on his watch. #netanyahu#trump#israel#gaza#syria#palestine 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸