NEW EASTERN OUTLOOK 🌐 (@NEO_Journal)

Netanyahu Picks Politics Over Peace ➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿ Benjamin Netanyahu was handed an exit from Gaza, but he chose an election instead, ensuring his stay in power outlasts both war and peace in Gaza. For eight days after Trump's Board of Peace released its 15-point roadmap on July 31, Netanyahu said almost nothing substantive about it. The plan called for a phased Israeli withdrawal alongside Hamas's disarmament. ✍️ Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research analyst of international relations and Pakistan's foreign and domestic affairs. ➡️ On August 9, under sustained pressure from far-right partners who oppose any Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Netanyahu reversed course: "Israel rejects the 15-point document," he told ministers, adding that forces would "not withdraw at all until Hamas is genuinely disarmed." The distance between those two moments—eight days of ambiguity followed by abrupt rejection—is evidence that this decision was engineered for a domestic audience. Israel is heading to the polls on October 27, and Netanyahu is defending a coalition that polling suggests may not win the majority. Taking the stand against the US and Trump is something Netanyahu can sell to domestic audiences. Leaders defending real strategic principles do not typically need a week of silence and a coalition revolt to discover where they stand. ➡️Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have largely stopped since August 3. A prime minister who genuinely believed the roadmap endangered Israeli security would not be quietly observing one of its central terms while publicly denouncing the document. Hamas, under its newly elevated leader Khalil al-Hayya, endorsed the disarmament framework almost immediately—allowing it to cast itself as the compliant party and Israel as the obstacle. Netanyahu has handed the group a public-relations opening it could not have engineered on its own. Former Israeli defense ministry analyst Ehud Eilam has suggested that Gaza is not actually the most urgent file—Iran is—and Israel may make concessions on Gaza specifically to secure renewed American cooperation against Tehran. 🟦A war that has devastated Gaza and killed tens of thousands of people is not, in this framing, a crisis to be resolved. It is a lever to be pulled at the moment of maximum strategic advantage. The manner of this rejection—the delay, the reversal only after far-right pressure, the quiet compliance with terms being publicly denounced—separates a genuine red line from a politically convenient one. If Netanyahu's coalition survives October 27, the incentive to keep managing Gaza policy around far-right sensitivities will intensify. If it collapses, whoever negotiates next inherits a very different set of constraints. Either way, Hamas has already learned that public commitment without action can still shift blame onto Israel. The next chapter will be written less by strategists than by whoever wins an election. READ MORE #Netanyahu #Gaza #Israel #Trump #Hamas #Elections #Geopolitics