Israel and the Cease-Fire

[Celerity]

Will Bibi Netanyahu manage to keep the war going, or will Trump finally appreciate that U.S. interests and Bibi’s are far from identical?

https://prospect.org/2026/04/10/israel-netanyahu-trump-cease-fire-iran-war/


President Donald Trump shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the end of a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, December 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Florida. Credit: Alex Brandon/AP Photo

President Trump’s hapless efforts to extricate himself and the United States from his failed Iran war may have one salutary piece of collateral damage. There is now a wedge between Trump and one of his prime manipulators: Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who prodded Trump into launching the war and recklessly sought to widen it, is now trying to sabotage the fragile cease-fire.

We have to hope that there will not be far more serious collateral damage in the form of increased antisemitism—of the real kind, not the fake version that Trump has been using to eviscerate civil rights enforcement for everyone but Jews. At some point, Trump may well turn on his former close ally and take MAGA with him. The fact that the U.S. delegation to Islamabad this weekend is headed by Vice President JD Vance is a mark of Trump’s desperation. Vance was one of the few senior people in the administration (and the only one whom Trump can’t fire) to express skepticism about the war.

But even before Vance departed for Pakistan, Netanyahu was doing his best to undermine the deal. Netanyahu had not been consulted about the cease-fire, nor was Israel was invited to participate in negotiations. On Wednesday morning, hours after Trump announced the cease-fire, Israel’s military launched over 100 strikes on southern Lebanon, killing more than 300 people, including in Beirut neighborhoods outside of Hezbollah’s traditional domain that had been spared. Israel’s attacks on southern Lebanon have now killed more than 1,800 people, including many civilians, and displaced more than one million from their homes.

Vance tried to claim that suspension of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon was not part of the bare-bones cease-fire agreement, calling it a “misunderstanding” with the Iranians: “I think the Iranians thought that the cease-fire included Lebanon, and it just didn’t, we never made that promise,” Vance told reporters. He was contradicted by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped negotiate the terms. Sharif said that Lebanon was explicitly part of the cease-fire agreement.

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