Opinion | The Israeli Right May Soon Be Disenchanted With Trump

The most interesting detail of the hostage-cease fire deal that Israeli and Hamas officials agreed to on Wednesday lies neither in its terms, which mainly resemble what’s been on the table for months, nor in the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, is effectively acquiescing to Hamas’s continued grip on power in the Gaza Strip after loudly and repeatedly vowing he wouldn’t.It’s the way the deal was secured: by Steven Witkoff, Donald Trump’s billionaire friend and incoming Mideast envoy, in a blunt Saturday morning meeting with the prime minister.“The envoy explained to his host in no uncertain terms that Trump expected him to agree to a deal,” Amos Harel, the Haaretz military analyst, reported on Tuesday.

“Things that Netanyahu had termed life-and-death issues,” he added, “suddenly vanished.”Harel calls this “the Trump effect.” What is it? Partly it’s the store of political capital that every president-elect has before coming to office and spending (or squandering) it; partly it’s the fact that Trump is behaving as if he’s already the president.But mostly it’s the fear and eagerness to please that Trump engenders, above all in those who seek his favor.The result, in the hostage case, is an underappreciated diplomatic paradox: Thanks largely to Trump, a deal demanded by the Israeli left and reviled by the right is about to come into effect.

A year’s worth of diplomacy by the Biden administration is finally about to bear fruit on account of its political nemesis.The far-right parties that are part of Netanyahu’s coalition may bolt the government.

And Netanyahu is far more prepared to bend the knee to Washington than he was when there were Democrats in the White House.In the hostage deal, the price for Israel will in many ways be heavy.For every Israeli hostage released by Hamas, Israel will release several-fold Palestinian prisoners, many of them with Israeli blood on their hands.

It was through one such re...