Checked Mate

The 11th hour battle over whether to proceed with the Trump plan for Gaza, even before all the hostages had been returned, encapsulated the behind-the-scenes struggle over Gaza’s future.

Bibi Netanyahu is careful to keep his disagreements with Donald Trump behind closed doors, but the president’s frontmen and their plans for a postwar Gaza are a different story.

“Witkoff has become a lobbyist for Qatari interests and is taking revenge on Netanyahu for refusing to open the Rafah crossing before the return of the hostage Ran Gvili,” a senior Israeli official was quoted this week in Yedioth Ahronoth, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The newspaper that sits at the heart of Netanyahu’s legal cases is anything but a pro-Bibi mouthpiece, to put it mildly. Yet at the present moment — when Sheldon Adelson’s Israel Hayom has turned its back on Netanyahu and adopted a friendlier posture toward Naftali Bennett — this was apparently the last remaining platform for conveying such a message.