Netanyahu Looks Like a Small Leader at a Historic Moment

Thomas L. Friedman

When I think about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address on Wednesday to a joint meeting of Congress, the first thing that comes to mind is the famous dictum “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” This is one of those weeks for Israel, America and the Middle East. A decade is teed up to happen — or not.

By pure accident, a set of profound war-or-peace tipping points have intersected this week that Tolstoy could not have made up. In the wake of President Biden’s decision on Sunday to put his country ahead of his personal interests and cede power, Netanyahu — who has consistently put his personal interests ahead of his country’s to hold power — comes to Washington. And he comes facing two intertwined decisions that could provide Biden a huge foreign policy legacy and transform Netanyahu’s own legacy at the same time — or not.

It’s as if the writers of “The West Wing” on NBC decided to collaborate on a script with the writers of “Fauda” on Netflix — and they’re now wrestling over whether to make a series about a new dawn or a new tragedy for America, Israel and the Arab world.

Thanks to the frequent-flier travels since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 of Biden, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, C.I.A. Director Bill Burns and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Netanyahu has two huge decisions sitting on his desk that could both pause the fighting in Gaza — and Lebanon — and lay the groundwork for a new U.S.-Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran.

We are talking about the most consequential opportunity to reshape the Middle East since the Camp David agreements in the 1970s. The first decision, though, requires Netanyahu to agree — right now — on a phased-cease-fire deal tentatively reached by U.S., Israeli, Qatari, Egyptian and Hamas negotiators that would trigger, in Phase 1, a six-week pause in the fighting in Gaza and the return of 33 Israeli hostages (some dead, some alive), including 11 women, in return for several hundred Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

In June, Netanyahu signaled his support for the basic parameters of this deal but since then has been toying around with certain aspects of it — dialing up and down their security importance to an Israeli public that does not always know the details — to buy himself time before signing off and possibly alienating the far-right extremists in his cabinet, to whom he has promised a “total victory” over Hamas in Gaza.

Netanyahu has focused on three security issues. One is the movement of Gazan civilians from southern Gaza, where they have taken refuge, to northern Gaza City, where many had their homes. Netanyahu had been seeking some kind of inspection system to prevent armed Hamas members from flowing back to the north, but with tens of thousands of people who will be moving, the Israeli army knows that it will be impossible to prevent a few hundred Hamas fighters from coming back (plenty are there already) and believes it can deal with them later.

The second issue is the control of the border between Gaza and Egypt, where Hamas built tunnels and smuggling routes from which it brought in many weapons. The Israeli army, according to a source, believes it has identified or destroyed most of the tunnels and that Israel and Egypt can ensure no one is passing above ground for now — and they can build a more permanent barrier over time. The last issue is the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza, which Israel says Hamas must never again control and where it insists on some inspection oversight — in partnership with non-Hamas Palestinians and some international party.

As Israeli and U.S. security officials explained to me, none of these issues should be deal breakers — unless Netanyahu wants to inflame one of them to get out of the deal — even though Israel’s top military and intelligence officials all reportedly support it now.

On Monday Haaretz quoted retired Col. Lior Lotan, a hostage expert and a close adviser to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (who is the only serious adult in Netanyahu’s cabinet), as telling Israel’s Channel 12 News on Friday: “Now is the money time. There’s a unique opportunity in the negotiations, but such opportunities pass if they aren’t utilized. The terms of the deal include risks that the defense establishment can tolerate. All the heads of the security services say this. To counter them with a hypothetical, as if it were possible to get more through more military pressure, would be wrong.’’

At the same time, Israel’s Mossad chief David Barnea, the country’s top hostage negotiator, reportedly told Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet “that the female hostages don’t have any time left to wait for a new hostage deal framework.”

Hamas, whatever its lingering reservations, also seems to want a deal now too. It has grown steadily more unpopular in Gaza (the most underreported aspect of this conflict) for having started a war with no plan for the morning after and no protection for Palestinian civilians. It is not clear to me who will try to kill the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar first, if and when he emerges from his hiding place — the Israeli army or Gazan civilians.

Another huge benefit of a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel is that it would be likely to pave the way for a Hezbollah-Israel cease-fire, so tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the Lebanon-Israel border could return home. Given the increased use of precision rockets by both Israel and Hezbollah, U.S. defense officials now believe that the biggest danger to the Middle East is a widening Israel-Hezbollah war.

And now for Netanyahu’s second big decision. On a parallel track, the Biden team has worked out virtually all the details for a U.S.-Saudi defense alliance that would also include normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia — provided that Netanyahu would agree to embark on negotiations for a two-state solution. The Saudis are not asking for a hard deadline for a Palestinian state. But they are demanding that Israel agree to start credible, good-faith negotiations with the explicit goal of a two-state solution, with mutual security guarantees.

Such a negotiation, in tandem with a cease-fire on the Gaza and Lebanon fronts, would be a diplomatic coup. It would isolate Iran and Hamas. It would normalize relations between the Jewish state and the birthplace of Islam. It would give Israel the cover to enlist Palestinian and Arab support for peacekeeping troops in Gaza. And it would give Israel the cement for a more formal regional defense alliance with Arab partners against Iran.

Finally, and most important, it could create a long-term pathway for a Palestinian state once the fighting in Gaza is over and everyone on all sides grasps what I believe is the most important lesson of this war: none of the parties can afford another one — not when everyone is getting precision weapons.

As David Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute’s Project on Arab-Israel Relations, put it to me: “With two decisions — yes on a hostages-for-cease-fire deal now and yes on the Saudi normalization terms that would end the Sunni Arab states’ war with Israel and consolidate a regional alliance to isolate Iran — Netanyahu would create a win for Israel and for his partner President Biden.

“The Abraham Accords would be succeeded by the ‘Joseph Accords.’ Two legacies for two leaders: Biden and Bibi. It would be a bitter and tragic irony if Netanyahu — whose self-image is one of a strategic thinker — would miss this moment due to Israeli domestic politics and fear of his far-right coalition partners.”

Indeed, we are going to find out very soon whether Netanyahu can live up to his grand Churchillian self-image or is, as the writer Leon Wieseltier once observed, just “a small man in a big time.” Up to now Netanyahu has been clinging to power to avoid being thrown in jail should he be found guilty in any of his ongoing trials — for breach of trust, accepting bribes and fraud. As such, he has been unwilling to do anything daring on peace with the Palestinians without permission from the crazy far-right members of his cabinet, who are demanding the “total victory” over Hamas that Netanyahu himself promised. But with the Israeli Knesset about to adjourn from July 28 until Oct. 27, Netanyahu could agree to both the Gaza and Saudi deals without fear of his government being toppled, because that is virtually impossible to do when the Knesset is out of session.

So, the world waits, the hostages wait, Biden waits, the Palestinians wait, the Saudis wait, the Israelis wait. Will Bibi, once again, be just a small man in a big time or surprise everyone and be a big man in a big time?