At the end of Mr. Holland’s Opus, the 1995 film about a high-school music teacher who is writing what he hopes will be the great American symphony in his spare time, Mr. Holland has failed to save the school’s music program from budget cuts. As he packs up his boxes and turns to leave, he discovers that a contingent of his students secretly has learned to play his symphony, and he is invited to the stage to conduct its first-ever performance in front of his family, friends, and current and former students.
That is the closest scene I can think of to which I would compare Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s presence at the White House yesterday, culminating in a see-it-to-believe-it press conference with President Trump.
The news out of the presser was obviously Trump’s idea that the U.S. could take a “long-term ownership position” in the Gaza Strip, spearheading a rebuilding of the enclave after moving some 2 million Palestinians out of the strip. But the whole scene was something else for Bibi, something more.
Let’s rewind briefly to set the stage. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, had finally been defeated a dozen years into his second stint as premier, in 2021. Eighteen months later, Bibi found his way back into power, but in order to do so he had to assemble a coalition that was guaranteed to make trouble for him from Day One. His government proposed a radical democratizing of the Israeli judiciary that alienated half the country for a year, and failed anyway.
Then came Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s 9/11. Netanyahu, who had long (with good reason) branded himself as Mr. Security, had presided over the worst domestic security failure in 50 years. He was made to prosecute the ensuing war effort with Joe Biden tying one hand behind Israel’s back. The International Criminal Court put out a warrant for his arrest.
And then came a series of cinematic operations: the simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers that Israel had tricked Hezbollah operatives into carrying, the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a safe house in Tehran, the elimination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah deep underground, and the zapping of Iran’s air defenses, among others.
The rollercoaster ride continued: The electoral victory of Donald Trump—no doubt the Israeli government’s preferred candidate—was followed by a painful cease-fire deal that, by all accounts, Netanyahu had been strongarmed into by the new administration while Bibi was still recovering from prostate-removal surgery.
Which brings us to this week. Netanyahu’s stay at the Blair House in Washington, a guest house of sorts for foreign dignitaries, was his 14th—more than anyone else in the history of the house. He is the first foreign leader to meet with Trump since the new president took office.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump had floated his Gaza-relocation idea, warned the Iranians to watch their step, and pulled U.S. funding from some of the United Nations’ atrocious anti-Israel committees. Trump then led Netanyahu into a packed room for the press briefing. “Congratulations,” the president said to the prime minister. “You bring them out, you really bring them out.”
And suddenly, Netanyahu once again appeared to have made the right bet. His willingness to sign the cease-fire deal and give Trump a big policy win to start his presidency seems to have won him barrels of goodwill. Trump acted as though the four-year Biden presidency was a rude interruption of a U.S.-Israel victory tour:
“In my first term, the prime minister and I forged a tremendously successful partnership that brought peace and stability to the Middle East like it hadn’t seen in decades. Together we defeated ISIS. We ended the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, one of the worst deals ever made by the way, and imposed the toughest ever sanctions on the Iranian regime. We starved Hamas and Iran’s other terrorist proxies and we starved them like they had never seen before. Resources and support disappeared for them. I recognized Israel’s capital, opened the American Embassy in Jerusalem and got it built by the way—built it too, not only designated it, but got it built at a price that nobody’s seen for 40 years. We got it built. It’s beautiful, all Jerusalem Stone right from nearby and it’s something that’s very special. And recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, something that they talked about for 70 years and they weren’t able to get it, and I got it.”
He then talked about the value of the Abraham Accords and his intention to bring more countries into the mutual-recognition pact with Israel. As for Israel’s response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, Trump said: “I want to salute the Israeli people for meeting this trial with courage and determination and unflinching resolve.”
For his part, Bibi knew just what to say. He lauded Trump as the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. He thanked the president and repeated Trump’s list of accomplishments. He praised Trump for “looking at things and seeing them as they are.” He made sure to single out Israel’s value to the U.S.: “we’ve defeated some of America’s worst enemies. We took out terrorists who are wanted for decades for shedding rivers of American blood, including the blood of 241 Marines murdered in Beirut.” He said it was time to finish the job in Gaza.
Netanyahu had spent his entire career prophesying the coming of a new Middle East, to be brought about not through naïve Israeli concessions but the defeat of Israel’s enemies and a cold assessment of what that would require. He almost single-handedly focused the world’s attention on the Iranian nuclear threat and now that illicit program is vulnerable to extinction. He cast a skeptical eye on Europe’s old guard and helped Israel navigate the global right-wing populist surge, neither bowing to it nor making enemies of it.
Netanyahu’s career has its successes and its failures, like any other. But the broad picture of the Middle East realignment that Trump has facilitated looks very much like the one Bibi has long anticipated. Case in point: Trump’s Gaza plan is extraordinarily unlikely but it is motivated by the common goals of defeating Hamas, pacifying the Gaza Strip, and ending the Arab world’s eight-decade manipulation of Palestinian diasporism to throttle Israel’s drive for normalization.
More breakthroughs may or may not come. Netanyahu will almost certainly be ready either way.
