What's the End Game for Gaza? Netanyahu Must Spell It Out

Since Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Israel's prime minister for the first time in 1996, he has built up a career as someone who has consistently been dragged into various diplomatic, political and peace initiatives by the different American administrations with which he has worked.

In the 1990s, for example, it was President Bill Clinton who pressured Netanyahu to endorse the Oslo Accords and to not only follow, but also to bolster the process that had been set into motion by his predecessor Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by a Jewish right-wing extremist a year earlier.

Clinton pressured Netanyahu to withdraw Israeli military forces from the West Bank city of Hebron and then to sign the Wye River agreement in 1998. Under that deal, Israel agreed to give Palestinians control over additional parts of the West Bank, and in exchange, the Palestinians were supposed to take steps to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel.

In 2009, when Netanyahu returned to the prime minister's office after a 10-year hiatus, he was again pressured into agreeing to an American president's vision for peace. This time it was President Barack Obama who twisted Netanyahu's arm to agree to a freeze on West Bank settlement construction, to release Palestinian prisoners and to hold talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

And then there was President Donald Trump who wanted Netanyahu's support........

© Newsweek