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Gaza: Netanyahu gives in to Trump’s ultimatum and opens crossings

The tycoon has grown impatient with the Israeli prime minister. Under diplomatic threat, Israel allows entry of first humanitarian trucks. US president: ‘Either stop the war or we will leave you alone’

For the first time after more than two months of total closure, five truckloads of humanitarian aid managed to cross the Kerem Shalom crossing, bringing food and basic necessities to the exhausted population of the Gaza Strip. A crossing that marks more than a logistical breakthrough: it is the first concrete sign that diplomatic pressure on Israel may have reached breaking point.

What made the Israeli government bend was not only the growing humanitarian emergency, but an ultimatum issued directly by the United States. According to a reconstruction by the Washington Post, the Trump administration reportedly sent a direct message to Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu: ‘If you do not end the war, we will abandon you’. A full-blown threat, reflecting the White House’s growing discontent with a conflict that has become politically untenable.

The turning point came on Sunday evening, at the end of an agitated government meeting without a vote, which left the ultranationalist parties in the coalition out of the picture. In parallel, Netanyahu held prolonged telephone talks with presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, while negotiations on the release of the hostages resumed in Doha. It is the first time that the Israeli premier explicitly mentions a possible end to the fighting as a topic on the table.

In Washington, White House spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt confirmed the change of tone: ‘The president wants the war to end. And Trump has been clear: Hamas must release all hostages’. The fear, less and less concealed, is that the prolonged siege in Gaza could escalate into a full-scale famine. ‘The pressure was approaching a red line,’ Netanyahu himself admitted in an official video, released to appease domestic criticism.

Criticism, however, was not long in coming. The extreme right-wing Israeli parties, excluded from the decision-making process, accuse Netanyahu of caving in and threaten political repercussions. The opening of the crossing is experienced as a backward step, a sign that Israel is losing control of the narrative and the diplomatic field.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, those five trucks do not resolve the crisis, but they do break a blockade that seemed impenetrable. And they become the symbol of a fragile equilibrium, built on a forced understanding and the long shadow of a presidential ultimatum.

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