By Adam Reed | International Affairs Analyst
There’s an old line that trust is built in drops and lost in buckets. Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy has spent three decades proving exactly how true that is. The history here is basically a catalogue of signed documents, celebrated handshakes, and unfulfilled promises. More than thirty years after the Oslo Accords laid out a phased path toward Palestinian statehood, the reality on the ground still looks like permanent occupation rather than sovereign independence. Now, with the US backed Board of Peace announcing a landmark framework where Hamas agrees in principle to disarm in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the real question facing the international community isn’t whether the Palestinian side will comply. It’s whether Netanyahu and the political system he represents can ever actually be trusted to follow through on a full military exit.
Historical evidence, political precedent, and Netanyahu’s own documented record all point the same direction, trusting Israeli leadership to deliver a total withdrawal is a genuinely dangerous illusion. Time and again, Israel has used phased agreements, shifting benchmarks, and security pretexts to stall, unravel, and ultimately walk back commitments to give up territory.
The modern framework for Palestinian territorial control started with the 1993 Oslo Accords, which laid out a five year transitional period leading to a permanent settlement. Instead of a withdrawal, the decades that followed saw the explosive growth of Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank. Back in 1993, roughly 110,000 Israeli settlers lived in the West Bank, not counting East Jerusalem. Today that number tops 500,000, anchored by massive infrastructure networks that have carved Palestinian territory into isolated cantons. The peace process didn’t end the occupation. It became a diplomatic shield behind which the occupation just got more entrenched over time.
When Netanyahu took his first term as prime minister in the late 1990s, this pattern of calculated delay became actual official policy. Under international pressure, he signed the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, which required specific Israeli military redeployments from Area C in the West Bank. Almost immediately after signing it, he halted implementation, citing alleged Palestinian security failures while facing pressure from far right coalition partners at home. Years later, Netanyahu got caught on video boasting to Israeli settlers about how he’d deliberately sabotaged the Oslo process, saying he’d effectively ended the Oslo Accords himself, explaining how he manipulated the definition of military locations to freeze withdrawals while keeping the international community passive the whole time.
“As Sharon’s senior advisor Dov Weisglass famously admitted, the actual goal was freezing the peace process to prevent a Palestinian state from ever forming.”
This kind of systematic non compliance isn’t limited to one person either. It reflects a deeply ingrained consensus across the Israeli political and military establishment. During the 2005 Gaza disengagement under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel pulled its ground troops and settlers out of the strip. But international legal bodies, including the UN, maintained that Gaza remained under Israeli occupation regardless. Israel kept total control over Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters, electromagnetic spectrum, commercial crossings, and population registry the whole time. The disengagement was never really a move toward Palestinian statehood. As Sharon’s senior advisor Dov Weisglass famously admitted, the actual goal was freezing the peace process to prevent a Palestinian state from ever forming.
The current conflict in Gaza has laid bare this same institutional refusal to actually let go of control. After months of devastating military operations that human rights organizations, international legal scholars, and South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice have all described as genocidal, the international community put forward a clear ultimatum. To end the war, Hamas accepted the core demand of giving up governance and disarming under the supervision of an international stabilization force.
Predictably, the moment that threshold got crossed, Netanyahu moved the goalposts again. Right after the Board of Peace announced the agreement, Netanyahu publicly rejected the draft terms, declaring Israeli forces wouldn’t withdraw from their current lines in Gaza until every element of disarmament was unilaterally verified by Israel itself. It’s not our draft, he stated on social media, making clear Israel reserves the right to keep an indefinite military presence inside the enclave.
“Until international pressure imposes a genuine cost on Israeli intransigence, any promise of a total withdrawal from Gaza is just going to become another broken pledge in a long, tragic history of occupation.”
This is a well worn playbook at this point. Israeli strategic doctrine relies on constantly moving the target. Once one condition gets met, another one shows up. For years, Western leaders insisted peace was impossible because Hamas wouldn’t disarm. Now that a disarmament framework actually exists through international mediation, Israel is arguing disarmament has to happen before any withdrawal even begins, effectively demanding unconditional Palestinian surrender while keeping its own military occupation fully intact.
The structural makeup of the current Israeli government makes a real withdrawal even less plausible. Netanyahu’s coalition depends directly on far right ministers, including Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, who’ve openly called for permanently annexing Gaza, mass expulsion of its Palestinian population, and rebuilding Jewish settlements inside the strip. Smotrich has repeatedly called for completely dismantling Palestinian administrative structures, while Ben Gvir has pushed for military buffer zones that permanently carve Gaza into militarized sectors. For Netanyahu, agreeing to a full withdrawal means the immediate collapse of his governing coalition and potential legal exposure in his ongoing corruption trials. Political survival basically requires the war, and the occupation, to keep going.
Beyond domestic politics, the raw power imbalance shapes this entire dynamic. Israel operates as an occupying power with advanced military technology, backed by billions in annual US military aid, and shielded by diplomatic vetoes at the UN Security Council. Peace agreements between an occupying force and an occupied population can’t survive on honor or goodwill alone. They need real external enforcement behind them.
For decades, Western powers, led by the United States, have held Palestinians to extremely precise compliance standards while treating Israeli violations with mild diplomatic concern at best. When Israel expands settlements, launches extrajudicial strikes during ceasefires, or refuses to honor signed redeployments, Western capitals issue statements of deep concern while the flow of weapons and financial backing continues uninterrupted. That total lack of consequences has taught Israeli leadership that violating international agreements comes with zero real political or economic cost.
Expecting Netanyahu to voluntarily honor a full military withdrawal from Gaza defies thirty years of documented history at this point. He’s spent his entire political career dismantling the prospects of Palestinian sovereignty, expanding illegal settlements, and making sure Israel retains overriding military control from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean.
Whether this peace deal actually succeeds isn’t going to depend on Netanyahu’s word, his signature, or his public promises. It’s going to depend entirely on whether Western nations, particularly the United States and its European allies, are finally willing to use real diplomatic, economic, and military leverage to enforce compliance. Until international pressure imposes a genuine cost on Israeli intransigence, any promise of a total withdrawal from Gaza is just going to become another broken pledge in a long, tragic history of occupation.
About the author:
Adam Reed is an International affairs analyst focusing on geopolitics, defense strategy, and global security trends.