By large majority, Israelis say Trump secured hostage deal, may pressure Israel
Survey finds most Israelis think US president will punish Jerusalem if it doesn’t fall in line with his Mideast policy goals, such as normalization with Saudi Arabia
Large majorities of Israelis believe that US President Donald Trump was responsible for securing the recent ceasefire-hostage deal with the Hamas terror group, and that he is likely to put pressure, or even impose sanctions, on Jerusalem in the future if it does not align with his Middle East policy goals, according to a recent Israel Democracy Institute survey.
When asked, “In your opinion, was US President Trump correct or incorrect in saying that the ceasefire agreement and the release of the hostages were achieved thanks to his intervention?” a large majority of Israelis — 74% of Jews and 64% of Arabs — answered that he was correct.
Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the agreement, which was reached days before his inauguration, after more than a year of effort by the administration of his predecessor Joe Biden, under whom the framework for the deal was agreed to last spring.
The breakthrough came days after Trump threatened that there would be “all hell to pay” in the region if hostages were not returned by his first day in office — a threat that was generally interpreted as directed at Hamas, but that some have said was also directed at Israel.
The deal calls on Hamas to release all of the hostages held since its October 7, 2023, onslaught on southern Israel, in exchange for the release of thousands of Palestinian security inmates from Israeli prisons, and an end to fighting in the Gaza Strip. The three-stage deal is currently in its first phase, with its future uncertain.
When asked, “What are the chances that President Trump will exert real pressure on Israel, and perhaps even impose sanctions, if the Netanyahu-led government does not align with his initiatives in the Middle East, such as a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia?” a large majority of respondents similarly said the chances were fairly high or very high that he will.
Though answers to the latter question were largely the same between Jews (73.5%) and Arabs (67.5%), Jewish respondents who are on the right politically were less likely, at 66.5%, to answer yes than Jewish respondents on the left (89%) or the center (88%).
Many right-wing Israeli Jews celebrated Trump’s election in November, following steps he took during his first term in office from 2017 to 2021, when he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and brokered the Abraham Accords, while adopting a more friendly policy toward Israeli settlement in the West Bank than previous US administrations had.
Some of those erstwhile allies were disappointed, however, by Trump’s championing of the hostage-ceasefire deal, which they opposed, arguing that the costs to Israel’s security are unjustifiable, and are wary of the US president’s express goal of achieving normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia within the framework of the Abraham Accords.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, of the far-right Religious Zionism party, said Monday that he would not support normalization with Saudi Arabia if it means ending the war in Gaza with Hamas still in control of the Strip, and has said in the past he will not support normalization if it requires the establishment a Palestinian state.
The figures, released by the Israel Democracy Institute on Tuesday in advance of the full publication of its January 2025 Israeli Voice Index, came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet Trump later in the day at the White House, where the Gaza deal and Saudi normalization are expected to be central matters of discussion.
The survey was conducted by phone and online, and the questions were posed to 604 people in Hebrew and 151 in Arabic, to a pool of respondents representative of the adult Israeli population. The margin of error was 3.57%.
