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Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to tell Donald Trump on Monday that Hamas must return the remains of the last Israeli hostage left in Gaza before the next stages of the stalled ceasefire can be implemented, Israeli officials and analysts say.
The Israeli prime minister, who is scheduled to meet Trump at the US president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, is on his fifth visit to see Trump in the US this year.
The trip comes amid a new push by officials in Washington to force concessions from Israel to allow progress towards a second stage of the ceasefire in Gaza, which began in October after two years of devastating war.
The family of the last person whose remains are being held hostage, Ran Gvili, has joined the Israeli prime minister’s visiting entourage and will meet officials in Washington later this week.
An Israeli official in Netanyahu’s circle told Reuters that the prime minister would demand that Hamas must return the remains of all hostages in Gaza, as required under the ceasefire deal, before moving to the next stages of Trump’s plan.
A second phase calls for an interim authority made up of non-aligned Palestinian technocrats to govern the Palestinian territory, and an international stabilisation force (ISF) of thousands of troops to be deployed. Israel has significant concerns about both.
Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer, was badly wounded and then abducted during the October 2023 Hamas raid into Israel that triggered the conflict. It is unclear if he died of his wounds during the raid or in Gaza. Hundreds gathered on Saturday night in Tel Aviv to demand that Israel makes no concession to advance the ceasefire deal until his remains are returned.
Lianne Pollak-David, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and peace negotiator in the prime minister’s office, said the failure to return the remains of Gvili was a major issue. “Netanyahu and the Israelis as a people are simply not going to accept this,” she said.
Hamas has freed 20 living hostages and returned the bodies of 27 dead hostages since October and some observers see the insistence on Gvili’s remains as a delaying tactic to allow Israel’s military forces to remain in the 53% of Gaza they currently control.
On Friday, the US news outlet Axios reported that the Trump administration wanted to announce the Palestinian technocratic government for Gaza and the ISF as soon as possible and that senior Trump officials were growing exasperated “as Netanyahu has taken steps to undermine the fragile ceasefire and stall the peace process”.
Daniel Levy, a UK-based analyst and former Israeli peace negotiator, said Netanyahu had no intention of withdrawing further from Gaza or allowing any international force that would deter Israeli military action.
“He feels he has a number of cards to play yet and the remains of Gvili is the easiest one to play now but there are others,” Levy said.
Netanyahu is also expected to tell Trump that Israeli is prepared to restart the war in Gaza to force Hamas to surrender its weapons as required under the ceasefire agreement.
“Netanyahu knows exactly what he wants for Christmas – more of the same. Israeli troops stay in 51% of Gaza, periodically striking Hamas … without the shadow of withdrawal looming over him. None of this requires a denunciation of the [Trump] plan itself and Trump can very easily justify Israel’s extended stay on Hamas’s unwillingness to disarm,” Amit Segal, a prominent journalist who is close to Netanyahu, wrote on Monday.
Hamas retains large quantities of small arms but only a fraction of the heavy weapons that enabled its surprise attack into southern Israel in 2023, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 abducted.
More than 70,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the ensuing Israeli offensive and vast swathes of Gaza reduced to ruins. About 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the October ceasefire.
In recent weeks, Hamas has successfully established its authority over the parts of Gaza it controls with a series of executions, raids and beatings targeting rival powerbrokers, collaborators with Israel and criminal gangs. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population now live in the Hamas-controlled zone.
The Islamist militant organisation has proposed some solutions to allow some of its weapons to be put into storage but has refused to accept full disarmament.
For Netanyahu, who faces an election within 10 months, the prospect of Iran repairing the damage inflicted on its nuclear programme in its short war with Israel and the US this summer and building up its ballistic missile capabilities is a priority.
Analysts said Netanyahu and Trump could find much common ground on Iran, though the US may balk at a further round of attacks on Iran in the near future. Talks on a security agreement between Israel and Syria, which Washington has backed, have stalled.
Pollak-David, one of the founders of the Coalition for Regional Security, said that in an election year Netanyahu would want to show some diplomatic successes across the broader Middle East.
“As long as there is no progress on the [Trump plan for Gaza], a lot of major diplomatic achievements are in a freeze … There is an incentive for progress but not at the risk of Hamas staying in power,” she said.
Netanyahu also faces pressure from political opponents. On Monday, Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the Yisrael Beiteinu party, said Israel could not allow reconstruction in Gaza until the return of remains of Gvili.
Polls have shown that Netanyahu’s ruling coalition would lose power at an election with its current levels of support.
