Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has concluded his latest trip to the United States and appears to have gotten what he wanted from President Donald Trump.

Trump praised Netanyahu after Monday’s meeting, calling him a “hero” and saying Israel – and its prime minister – were “100 percent on track” with the Gaza ceasefire agreement signed by the US president.

That’s despite Reports that emerged last week U.S. officials are increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu’s apparent “slow progress” on the 20-point ceasefire plan implemented by the U.S. government in 2017 October – Suspicion that the Israeli prime minister may wish to continue hostilities against the Palestinian group Hamas at a time of his choosing.

Under the terms of the deal – after the exchange of all Gaza’s living and dead prisoners, the delivery of aid to the enclave and the freezing of all front lines – Gaza will enter a second phase, which includes negotiations on the creation of a technocratic “peace council” to govern the enclave and the deployment of an international security force to defend it.

Netanyahu has so far not allowed all the aid Gaza desperately needs, and has also insisted that phase two cannot proceed until Hamas returns the body of its last captive. He also demanded that Hamas disarm before Israel withdraws its troops, a suggestion that Trump fully supported after Monday’s meeting.

Hamas has repeatedly resisted Israeli pressure to disarm, and officials have said the weapons issue is an internal Palestinian matter that needs to be discussed among Palestinian factions.

So did Netanyahu deliberately avoid entering the second phase of the deal? Why does this happen?

Here are four reasons why Netanyahu may be satisfied with the status quo:

He’s under pressure from the right

By any measure, Netanyahu’s governing coalition is the most right-wing in the country’s history. Throughout the Gaza war, support from Israeli hardliners proved crucial in steering the prime minister’s coalition through periods of intense domestic protests and international criticism.

Now, many on the right, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gwir and Finance Minister Bezaleh Smotrich, oppose the ceasefire, protest the release of Palestinian prisoners and insist on the occupation of Gaza.

Netanyahu’s defense minister, Israel Katzand has shown little enthusiasm for delivering on the deal his country promised in October. Katz, speaking at a ceremony to mark Israel’s latest illegal settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, asserted that Israeli troops would remain in Gaza to eventually clear the way for further settlements.

Katz reportedly later retracted his remarks under pressure from the United States.

He doesn’t want international troops in Gaza

Allowing international forces to deploy to Gaza would restrict Israel’s freedom of movement and limit its military’s ability to reenter Gaza, conduct targeted strikes or pursue Hamas remnants within the enclave.

So far, despite the ceasefire, Israeli forces have killed more than 400 people The area has been an enclave since it agreed to cease fighting on October 10.

Politically speaking, agreeing to the establishment of an international stabilization force, especially one from a neighboring country, would expand what Israel often sees as a domestic war into an international conflict in which many of the strategic, diplomatic and political decisions are made by actors outside its control.

It could also be seen domestically as a concession forced by the United States and the international community, undermining Netanyahu’s repeated claims to uphold Israel’s sovereignty and strategic independence.

“If Netanyahu allows foreign troops into Gaza, he will immediately deprive himself of a large degree of freedom of movement,” Israeli political analyst Nimrod Frasenberg said in Berlin. “Ideally, he needs everything to remain as it is without alienating Trump.”

He wants to resist any progress towards a two-state solution

While there is no explicit reference to a two-state solution, the ceasefire agreement does include a provision in which Israel and the Palestinians commit to dialogue on “a political future of coexistence of peace and prosperity.”

However, Netanyahu has opposed a two-state solution since at least 2015, when he campaigned on the issue.

Most recently, at the United Nations in September, he called the decision to recognize a Palestinian state “crazy” and claimed that Israel would not accept the establishment of a Palestinian homeland.

Israeli ministers have also been working hard to ensure that a two-state solution remains virtually impossible. Israeli plan Creating a series of new settlements that would separate occupied East Jerusalem – long considered the future capital of any Palestinian state – from the West Bank would make the creation of a viable state impossible.

This is not just an unfortunate consequence of geography. Announce Smotrich said in August on plans for the new settlement that the project would “bury the idea of ​​Palestinian statehood.”

It would be in his interest to resume the war

Netanyahu’s face A lot of Domestic threats, from his own corruption trial to the potentially explosive issue of forced military conscription of Israel’s extremist religious students. He also faces a public reckoning with his failures before and during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, all of which will come in a crucial election year for the prime minister.

Each of these challenges threatens to fracture his alliances and weaken his grip on power. However, all of this could be derailed — or at least politically obscured — by new conflicts with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and possibly even Iran.

Restarting the fight would allow him to once again present himself as a wartime leader, limit criticism and unite his allies and opponents around the well-worn banner of “national emergency.”