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\nMost Israelis wanted the fight against Hezbollah to continue. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s critics say he is showing that he cannot, or will not, stand up to President Trump.
\nPresident Trump may be trumpeting the cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot.
\nIsraeli voters did not want the fighting to end.
\nOverwhelmingly, polls showed, they wanted the military to keep up the pressure on Hezbollah, the militant group whose rockets and missiles have made life miserable and perilous for residents of northern Israel, until the group, which Iran backs, was destroyed or forced to disarm.
\nThat, after all, is what Mr. Netanyahu and his military chiefs had promised to do.
\nBut Mr. Netanyahu quickly, if grudgingly, fell in line on Thursday when Mr. Trump pressed for a cease-fire in Lebanon \u2014 just as the Israeli leader did with prior cease-fires the president had orchestrated.
\nNow, the prime minister\u2019s critics, and even some of his allies on the right, have seized on what appears plain as day: his inability to resist Mr. Trump\u2019s pressure, not just in pushing to bring the long-distance war with Iran to a close but even in demanding a truce with an enemy directly across Israel\u2019s northern border.
\n\u201cA cease-fire must come from a position of strength and be an Israeli decision, reflecting leverage that serves negotiations,\u201d said Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff whose new centrist opposition party, Yashar, is gaining in the polls. \u201cA pattern is emerging in which cease-fires are being imposed on us \u2014 in Gaza, in Iran and now in Lebanon.\u201d
\nAs if to underscore the point, Mr. Trump wrote on his social media site on Friday: \u201cIsrael will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!\u201d
\nIt is a stark turnabout from Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s role in persuading Mr. Trump to join Israel in attacking Iran \u2014 a hard-sell pitch, as The New York Times reported, that Iran was ripe for regime change, that a combined U.S.-Israeli operation could quickly topple the Islamic Republic, and that concerns about Iran\u2019s responding by closing the Strait of Hormuz and attacking U.S. interests in the region were overblown. None of those assurances proved true.
\nA core element of Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s appeal to voters \u2014 the argument that his close bond and strategic mind meld with Mr. Trump make him uniquely equipped to ensure Israel\u2019s security \u2014 now appears far less convincing.
\n\u201cNetanyahu influenced how the war started,\u201d said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. \u201cHe won\u2019t influence how it ends.\u201d
\nMr. Netanyahu, who is up for re-election this year \u2014 and whose coalition is behind in the polls \u2014 took pains to reassure Israelis about the halt in fighting with Hezbollah, saying that soldiers would remain in a security buffer zone extending 10 kilometers into Lebanon. That would guard against incursions into Israel and against the use by Hezbollah of anti-tank rockets to terrorize border communities, he said in a televised address.
\n\u201cOf course, there are still problems,\u201d Mr. Netanyahu conceded. \u201cThey still have rockets left.\u201d
\nBut Mr. Netanyahu said that could be addressed in the context of talks over what he said could be a \u201chistoric peace agreement with Lebanon.\u201d
\nOf course, it is Hezbollah, which could use a cease-fire to regroup, that looms as the would-be spoiler. The cease-fire negotiations were between Israel and the Lebanese government, not Hezbollah \u2014 and peace talks would be the same. But the militant group\u2019s assent would be crucial for any agreement to be enforceable.
\nWhatever comes of those negotiations, the talk in Israel of Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s tendency to \u201coverpromise\u201d when it comes to security matters \u2014 and particularly about what can be gained from military action \u2014 is growing louder.
\n\u201cIt creates, even for his supporters, this serious frustration because the results do not align with the promises,\u201d said Shira Efron, an Israeli analyst at RAND. \u201cNot even close. What are the war aims that have been achieved?\u201d
\nSo, too, is the talk of Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s apparent inability or unwillingness to stand up to Mr. Trump.
\nBefore the cease-fire was announced Thursday, \u201cThere was a serious school of thought here that said that, when it comes to Iran, Netanyahu has no choice but to go for a cease-fire if that\u2019s what Trump wants, but when it comes to Lebanon, he will defy him,\u201d said Nimrod Novik, a onetime aide to Prime Minister Shimon Peres and a fellow of the liberal Israel Policy Forum.
\n\u201cHe can\u2019t,\u201d Mr. Novik added. \u201cNot in an election year, when he\u2019s counting on Trump perhaps to campaign on his behalf, and at least not to throw him under the bus.\u201d
\nThere is a more forgiving read of Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s latest acquiescence to Mr. Trump\u2019s pressure.
\nFor one thing, the military gains to be had in Lebanon may have reached the point at which continued strikes do not reduce Hezbollah\u2019s capacity to attack Israel enough to justify the risks and costs.
\nFor another, Mr. Netanyahu has already gotten more from Mr. Trump than an Israeli leader has ever gotten from an American president.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily a negative to be considerate of their needs,\u201d said Ms. Efron, referring to the United States.
\nMs. Efron argued that Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s big promises \u201ccannot be achieved using military means alone.\u201d Negotiations will be necessary, she said, but diplomacy was a largely forgotten art in Israel.
\n\u201cSo if it leaves this whole idea of Trump pushing Israel to negotiations?\u201d she added. \u201cGood. That\u2019s great. Israel will not go voluntarily. Not under Netanyahu.\u201d
\nDavid M. Halbfinger is The Times\u2019s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. He also held that post from 2017 to 2021. He was the politics editor from 2021 to 2025.
\nA version of this article appears in print on April 18, 2026, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Obeying Trump Puts Netanyahu in a Bind. Order Reprints | Today\u2019s Paper | Subscribe
\n#Netanyahu #LebanonCeasefire #IsraelPolitics #TrumpInfluence #Hezbollah #MiddleEast #Diplomacy #IsraeliElections #ForeignPolicy #USIsraelRelations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You have been granted access, use your keyboard to continue reading. Most Israelis wanted the fight against Hezbollah to continue. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s critics say he is showing that he cannot, or will not, stand up to President Trump. President Trump may be trumpeting the cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, but Prime Minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}