The Deal

So the Knesset has approved the deal – the “peace plan” that isn’t peace at all, just an armistice with a countdown clock. The headlines call it historic, but that’s just journalists mistaking motion for progress. Israel will pull back a few miles, Hamas will hand over a few hostages, and everyone will pretend something profound has happened. It hasn’t. It’s a pause.

Netanyahu has sold it as statesmanship – a masterstroke of diplomacy, apparently. What it really is, of course, is an act of desperation. He’s bought himself three weeks of breathing space before the noose of politics, courts, and international law tightens again. Every day the guns stay quiet is another day closer to his reckoning.

And that’s the problem – peace, real peace, would kill him. His coalition survives on fear and vengeance, not reconciliation. The far right don’t want calm; they need chaos. They’re the political equivalent of arsonists complaining about fire engines. So the smart money says they’ll pull the plug the moment the headlines fade. One rocket, one border clash, one “technical delay” in a prisoner swap – and the whole thing goes up in smoke.

Which suits Netanyahu perfectly. A failed ceasefire lets him play the old tune – “We tried, but Hamas broke it.” He gets to keep his emergency powers, his coalition, and his martyr complex. Israel bleeds, Gaza starves, and he survives. That’s the only equation that matters to him now.

And if, by some miracle, the ceasefire holds? Then he’s finished. The trials resume, the ICC wakes up, and his far-right allies bolt. At that point, his only safe house is in Florida, where Trump – ever the patron saint of lost causes – might offer him a gold-plated guest suite in exchange for a photo op and a Nobel nomination. But that bolthole would survive only as long as Trump – or some other Republican with a similar contempt for international law – stays in power. The moment the Democrats walk back into the White House, the welcome mat turns into an extradition notice.

It would be the perfect symmetry – two men who can’t live without chaos, one fleeing justice, the other rewriting it. A “peace prize” pinned to the wreckage of two democracies that mistook narcissism for strength.

So yes, the Knesset has approved the deal. But don’t be fooled – this isn’t the end of the war. It’s the start of the next act in a play that never ends, because the lead actor’s freedom depends on keeping the curtain up.