US President Donald Trump is set to receive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on 28 December for talks on a range of issues, including the future of the Gaza ceasefire that Trump announced in October.
Netanyahu’s scheduled visit comes at a particularly crucial moment for the Gaza ceasefire, given that Hamas has almost fully honoured its commitments stipulated in the first phase of the deal, while Israel is violating its part. Even with the ceasefire, Israel has continued through its daily military strikes beyond the Yellow Line that divides Gaza.
Every day Israeli raids add to the already huge death toll caused by the two-year war, now exceeding 70,000. They also add to the brutal injuries that have been caused to more than 100,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, which prompted the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA to say this week that Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita worldwide.
“The Israeli violations go way beyond the military strikes, with all their grave consequences, because Israel has failed miserably to honour its commitments, according to phase one of the ceasefire with regard to the entry of desperately needed humanitarian aid,” said a Palestinian government official.
Israel, he added, has also failed to work on a plan with Egypt for the operation of the Rafah Crossing with Gaza, to help the exit of Palestinians who need medical help and for the return of Palestinians who have been stranded outside Gaza and wish to be reunited with their families.
The official said that Egypt has proposed several ideas for the operation of the crossing. He added that a tentative understanding had been reached with the European Union. “But Israel has not been cooperating,” he stated.
Late last week, Israel said that it was planning to open the Rafah Crossing from the Palestinian side that falls under the control of the Israeli occupation. However, Israeli officials said that this would only be for Palestinians who wish to exit Gaza and not for those who wish to return. They also said that if Egypt does not want to allow the Palestinians to enter Egypt, that “would be Egypt’s problem”.
The plan was immediately declined by Cairo, which described it as another attempt to forcibly displace the Palestinians from Gaza. Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said in remarks made while participating in the Doha Forum this week that the crossing cannot be used as a gateway for Palestinian displacement.
During a session titled “The Gaza Reckoning: Reassessing Global Responsibilities and Pathways to Peace,” the top Egyptian diplomat said that Israel needs to open all its crossings to Gaza to facilitate the entry of aid to the Palestinians.
Along with Qatar, Egypt’s co-mediator on the ceasefire, and six other Muslim-majority countries, Egypt issued a statement that slammed the Israeli plan for the Rafah Crossing. The statement said the signatories completely reject “any attempts to displace the Palestinians from their land”.
According to an Egyptian official, Egypt also sent a clear message to both the US and Israel that it has no intention of cooperating with the Israeli plan, irrespective of any pressure that might be exercised.
Over the past few weeks, Israeli officials have been sending messages to Cairo indicating that a gas-supply deal that was nearly in the offing was being put on hold pending Egypt’s agreement to Israeli plans for Gaza, including the operation of the Rafah Crossing.
According to the same official, Egypt has also declined to agree to involve the International Stabilisation Force (ISF), to be set up under the ceasefire agreement, in any plans to disarm Hamas. “We told the Americans quite frankly that this is not for the ISF, and certainly not for Egypt, to get involved in,” the official said.
He added that Egypt “has been very clear that the issue of Hamas’ arms needs to be settled within a wider inter-Palestinian dialogue.”
“As far as we are concerned, the job of the ISF is to observe the ceasefire,” he said. He added that there are different ways to interpret the language of UN Security Council Resolution 2803 that was adopted last month regarding Hamas’ disarmament.
“In our understanding, this language does not entail the use of military force to disarm Hamas,” the official said. “This is also the understanding of the vast majority of the Arab and Muslim countries that have expressed a willingness to contribute to the ISF with the intention of increasing the chances of the sustainability of the Gaza ceasefire,” he added.
Neither this official nor the other informed political sources who have spoken to Al-Ahram Weekly was willing to confirm that this issue will be on the agenda of the Trump-Netanyahu talks in the Oval Office later this month.
Washington has been telling both Cairo and Doha that Trump wants to move forward with the ceasefire, he said.
According to a regional diplomat with connections to officials in Washington as well as with Palestinian and Israeli politicians, neither Hamas nor Netanyahu will want to refuse Trump’s wish.
“Hamas knows that it has been weakened, and it does not wish to come across as the spoiler. Netanyahu needs the continuing support of Trump, especially because of his attempts to get a pardon from the president of Israel on the legal charges he is being tried for,” the diplomat said.
However, “it is one thing for the second phase to start and quite another for the elements of that phase to be fulfilled,” he added.
“The question is how far Trump will go to pressure Netanyahu to honour his commitments,” the diplomat said. He added that judging by the American tolerance of the scores of violations that Israel has committed over the past few weeks, it is hard to imagine that Trump will put the needed pressure on Netanyahu.
“I think this is the most crucial point, because if Netanyahu were to be really engaged in making the ceasefire work, then there are all sorts of ideas on the operation of the ISF, the Board of Peace, and all the other bodies that were proposed in the Trump plan for peace in Gaza” that could be developed, the diplomat said.
Meanwhile, none of the sources who spoke to the Weekly confirmed American press speculation about a possible three-way meeting bringing together Trump, Netanyahu, and President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi.
One source said that “the idea was proposed” of a meeting between Al-Sisi and Netanyahu. He added that there have also been talks about other high-level meetings to discuss the future of the ceasefire in Gaza.
Whether or not Cairo would accommodate such ideas, the political source said, depends on the possible outcome. He added that Cairo is not interested in going into high-level talks that will not produce specific results.
“The talks between Egyptian and Israeli officials happen because Egypt is really invested in making the ceasefire in Gaza work,” he said. “These talks are done in parallel with other meetings with Hamas, Turkey, Qatar, the Europeans, and the Americans,” he added.
“Netanyahu wants to confuse the bilateral elements of the Egyptian-Israeli relationship with the regional side of these relations,” the same source said. According to Egyptian sources, what is at stake is not the bilateral Egyptian-Israeli relations but the future of the ceasefire.
At the Doha Forum, both Abdelatty and his Qatari counterpart said that the ceasefire needs to be consolidated.
Speaking at the forum on Monday, Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the conflict had reached “a critical moment” and stressed that “a ceasefire cannot be considered complete without a full Israeli withdrawal and the restoration of stability in Gaza.”
He cautioned that the crisis would escalate if left unresolved.
For his part, Abdelatty stressed that it is Israel who is “violating the ceasefire daily”. He added that the second phase of the ceasefire depends on the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
On Tuesday, Abdelatty called his American counterpart, Marco Rubio, to discuss the fate of the Gaza ceasefire. According to a press statement issued by the office of the foreign minister, Abdelatty underlined the need to move forward with the launch of the ISF and the initiation of the second phase of the ceasefire to avoid any possible deterioration on the ground in Gaza.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 December, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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