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TEL AVIV — The Trump administration's aggressive efforts to promote the success of the Gaza ceasefire deal have some Israelis bristling at what they see as an overly intrusive approach that limits Israel's freedom of action and concedes too much to Hamas.
Over the past 10 days, a parade of top U.S. officials have passed through Israel, in part to make sure that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adheres to the terms of the ceasefire agreement as defined by its prime sponsor, President Donald Trump. The administration has also taken the exceptional step of deploying 200 U.S. troops to a coordination center in southern Israel, where they will help oversee the implementation of the deal and potentially constrain the Israeli military's operations in Gaza.
"The Americans aren't just involved. They're leading it. Israel is merely participating," said Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav, a former air and missile defense commander in the Israeli military. "Anywhere in the world where the Americans deploy a joint task force, they push everyone else aside and take command, control and leadership of the operational activity."
"No one in Israel is comfortable with the current situation," he added, referring to discontent in the Israeli military.
Longtime Israeli military correspondent Amos Harel, writing in the Haaretz newspaper, said Israeli "defense officials have the impression that American scrutiny of Israel has reached a point that usurps Israel's military and diplomatic power."
In addition to meeting with top Israeli government and military figures, the visiting Americans - including Steve Witkoff, the U.S. envoy to the Middle East; Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law; Vice President JD Vance; and Secretary of State Marco Rubio - have toured the newly established U.S. civil-military coordination center in the desert city of Kiryat Gat, some 20 miles from the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. troops are playing a role in overseeing the urgently needed provision of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza and the search for bodies of deceased Israeli hostages there. That role could expand as the ceasefire agreement moves to the next phase, which calls for the disarmament of Hamas, the further pullback of Israeli forces in Gaza, and the establishment of a transitional government and stabilization force in the enclave.
"For the first time, America has placed troops in Israel, to monitor the ceasefire," said Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States. He added, "They're monitoring us, and they're restricting our movements."
Although neither Kushner nor Witkoff is a military or intelligence official, and Kushner does not even hold an official U.S. position, they received briefings from Israeli intelligence generals, who described what they said was Hamas's attempts to reconstitute and launch attacks against remaining Israeli troops in Gaza. In the coming days, U.S. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is also expected to visit Israel.
Speaking last week at a news conference at the center alongside Witkoff, Kushner and the head of U.S. Central Command, Adm. Brad Cooper - but without any Israeli officials in sight - Vance declined to set a deadline for Hamas to return all Israeli hostage bodies or to lay down weapons, though Israelis have clamored for both. Instead, he urged patience.
This exercise of American authority, on a level rarely experienced before by Israel, has proved sobering. Yaki Dayan, former Israeli consul in Los Angeles, said Trump and his envoys have demonstrated a "sentiment that is with Israel, [but] they are also heavily invested in the agreement, sometimes at the expense of Israel."
He said Israelis are unsure how far the U.S. would go in backing Israel as ceasefire disputes or violations arise: for instance, if Hamas violates the truce by attacking Israeli troops stationed to the east of what's known as the yellow line, where they still occupy about 53 percent of the enclave. The U.S.-Israel alliance will be tested, Dayan said, "once there will be a critical mass of incidents, once the ceasefire is broken too much."
Just two weeks ago, Israelis were cheering the return of the 20 hostages held in Gaza under the ceasefire agreement. Thousands of Israelis flooded the streets to celebrate the return of the hostages, first when they were transported from Gaza to Israeli hospitals and then as they were driven home in recent days, and hoisted Israeli flags alongside posters featuring Trump's image or the phrase "Thank you, President Trump." Seventy-seven percent of Israelis surveyed said Trump contributed "very much" in getting the agreement, while only 29 percent said Netanyahu was responsible for clinching the deal, according to a public-opinion poll published Monday by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Jerusalem.
But now, Israelis are increasingly anxious that Trump will give Hamas a pass, say former Israeli security and diplomatic officials. They worry that he is acting in deference to U.S. allies Turkey and Qatar, which are close to the militant group and played a vital role in mediating the ceasefire deal.
When Hamas reasserted control in Gaza earlier this month by attacking rival clans, some of which acknowledge they are backed by Israel, Trump initially said the fighting "didn't bother me much." When Hamas said it needed more time to find and return the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, Trump said that they were under rubble and pointed out that Israel had killed 70,000 people, contradicting Israeli assertions that Hamas was deliberately withholding many of the corpses.
Now Israel fears the U.S. may allow Hamas to play some role in the future Gaza government even though it has yet to relinquish its political control and give up its heavy weapons, said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence analyst who heads the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center.
"I do think that the American administration may be more flexible on things like the government in Gaza because President Trump is so eager to promote the ceasefire," Milshtein said. "Even if Israel is very critical and rejects this future government, I'm not sure it can override Trump."
Although Netanyahu had vowed to continue the two-year war if Hamas remained in power, he now says the ceasefire arranged by Trump and the subsequent American efforts to enforce it serve Israel's interests. Amid widespread discussion in the Israeli media about whether Israel has been reduced to an American "protectorate" or "client state" rather than the master of its own fate, Netanyahu on Sunday called such thinking "ridiculous."
Many of Netanyahu's critics say that Trump's plan, while imperfect, is better for Israel than the extended war the prime minister was waging.
"Netanyahu failed for two years to bring the hostages home," said an Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press. "Without President Trump, he would have kept on avoiding making the decision to end the war and bring them home."
Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, said Trump may now pressure Netanyahu to go beyond the ceasefire arrangement and conclude a broader peace deal with the Palestinians. Instead of resisting Trump, Netanyahu could work with him to reach accords with not only the Palestinians but also Arab countries that do not have relations with Israel, and potentially reap dividends at the ballot box.
Rabinovich noted that Trump told reporters late last week he was considering calling for Israel to release imprisoned Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti, who is widely seen as a unifying leader of a future Palestinian state - which Netanyahu has adamantly opposed.
"Raising Barghouti's name indicates that the idea of the two-state solution and a larger Israeli-Palestinian deal is being discussed in the policymaking environment around Trump," Rabinovich said. "What can Netanyahu do? There are two options: He can wait it out and hope Trump loses his patience and moves on. Or he could say, let me gamble on the big deal and try to run as Netanyahu the peacemaker."
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