It was clear during U.S. President Donald Trump's tour of the Gulf states that his foreign policy is in a very "different place" than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's, Washington-based veteran diplomatic journalist Laura Rozen said on the Haaretz Podcast, pointing to the growing divergence in interests between the White House and Israel's ruling coalition, both on Gaza and Iran.

In his second term in office, Trump "wants to make peace deals and trade deals," Rozen said, as Netanyahu, "for his own political reasons, wants to continue the Gaza war indefinitely."

From his behavior, it seems that Netanyahu "may be missing the signals that Trump is going in such a different direction," she said, pointing to Trump's agreement to cease U.S. attacks on the Houthis, his meeting with Syria's leader during his stay in Riyadh, his statements favoring a diplomatic nuclear deal with Iran over military confrontation, and his willingness to negotiate directly with Hamas for the release of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander.

Netanyahu's decision to sit on the sidelines, she said, and failure to make a gesture that could have moved Trump to include a stop in Jerusalem on his Middle East visit, was something that not only the Trump administration but "a lot of pro-Israel Americans" found disappointing.

Many of the changes in Trump's Middle East policies – particularly regarding Iran – since his first term, Rozen noted, can be attributed to a power shift in the Republican Party.

The increasingly strong "America First, MAGA wing of the GOP is not interested in wars of choice in the Middle East," she said, and thus far, in the second Trump term "the neoconservative element, the hawkish element, is definitely getting battered."

As a result, "strangely, you see MAGA people who are almost with the more traditional progressive Democrats when it comes to looking for a diplomatic solution on Iran, which is not something we saw in Trump's first term. It feels a little bit disorienting, even here in Washington."

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Announcing the release of Edan Alexander – the last living Israeli hostage in Gaza with U.S. citizenship – U.S. President Donald Trump did something he never did before, Haaretz columnist Amir Tibon said on the Haaretz podcast. 

“Trump has spoken before releasing hostages, but this is the first time that he explicitly called to end the 'brutal war' to bring back 'ALL of the hostages,'" Tibon said.

It is a hopeful sign, he explained, because without new determination by the U.S. president to apply “massive pressure” on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “this nightmare will not end.”

In Tibon’s view, “Netanyahu is determined to continue the war, and he's determined to abandon the remaining hostages who are not lucky enough to be American citizens like Edan Alexander.”

The fact that only Alexander was freed, while the non-American hostages remain in captivity, is a difficult pill to swallow for both the hostage families and the wider Israeli public, he added. While Alexander’s rescue is being celebrated, at the same time “it’s shocking that he is being saved because of his American citizenship, while the other hostages – including soldiers, including civilians – are left behind by the Israeli government.” 

Noting reports that Qatar would be gifting President Trump with a luxury airliner during the U.S. leader’s visit to the Gulf, Tibon made a tongue-in-cheek appeal to the Qataris. “Please give a second plane to Sara Netanyahu in return for ending the war and saving all the hostages. What is one airplane for the lives of so many people, after all. If you hear me, Qatari Government – Sara Netanyahu also needs a 747 – and we need the war to be over.”

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Benjamin Netanyahu's government may have announced plans to intensify its Gaza offensive and call up thousands of reservists – but "many Israelis, and especially the IDF top brass, are actually hoping that President [Donald] Trump will again intervene and reach some kind of deal," Haaretz senior security analyst Amos Harel said on the Haaretz Podcast.

Pressure from the American president will be the only way Netanyahu can resist the "huge political pressure to proceed" with the escalation and a long-term military presence in Gaza placed on him by far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, Harel said. "Unless Trump decides to intervene, we might be facing a massive military operation, and in my view, that would be a disaster."

Speaking with podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Harel assessed the war's multiple fronts in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, emphasizing that in nearly every case, the will – and whims – of the U.S. president plays a decisive role.

"It's quite clear that Trump is less interested than before and talks less about the Palestinian conflict and the Gaza Riviera idea – it may be because he fears failure there. He seems to prefer to invest his time and efforts in the Saudis, Emiratis, and Qataris who are offering him trillions of dollars in deals in weapons or technology. This is what Trump is focused on."

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Orly Erez-Likhovski was worried when she heard about the threats against attendees of a screening of the annual alternative Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Ceremony in the city of Ra'anana set to be held at a Reform synagogue on the eve of Israel's Memorial Day.

Erez-Likhovski, Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), told Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer how the "emotional and moving" ceremony was disrupted by hundreds of opponents chanting outside, throwing stones at the building, and intruders attempting to break in and disrupt it. At the end, when police escorted her to her car, a stone smashed her windshield and injured her.

"It was very, very, very scary," she said. "I've been to many protests in the last 20 years because of my work at IRAC. But I've never seen such an amount of violence and hatred in my life. It was really a very, very frightening experience."

Despite the violence, Erez-Likhovski said she was "proud" of the congregation for refusing to back down and cancel the event because of the hate and incitement. "Giving in to extremism is dangerous in itself, but also because it's a slippery slope. I think we have to stand up for our values."

She said she was disappointed by the police's failure to handle the situation and the "insufficient" reaction of the country's leaders, who failed to condemn the violence.

"I would expect everyone to condemn this, because it seems like a very basic thing to say you should not come and hit people and try to kill them because they think differently. Unfortunately, this is not obvious in the current state of affairs in Israel."

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This Wednesday, Israelis will mark Yom HaZikaron, the Memorial Day for Israel's Fallen Soldiers. As of last count, there were more than 25,000 of them.

Although Israel has a highly developed culture of grieving and mourning, as a country that has suffered war and bloodshed since its first days, an unusual commemoration project has literally taken over the public sphere this year.

It began on a small scale, with friends and relative of soldiers killed in action since October 7 hanging up stickers featuring their photos and other interesting tidbits about them. It quickly spread to the point that in some places in Israel – like the Tel Aviv Hashalom train station – the entire space is wallpapered in them.

On the Haaretz Podcast, Dr. Noam Tirosh, head of the Department of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, who has spent the past few months studying these stickers, spoke to Judy Maltz about what he has learned. 

According to Tirosh, "the stickers are clearly an attempt by people to tell a wider story. The fallen soldiers were not only soldiers. They were lovers. They were football fans. They were friends of lots of people. They were human beings."

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Ittay Flescher, like most peace activists who devote their lives to cultivating Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, has gotten used to being called dangerously deluded and naive. 

“I hear it at least five or six days a week. Recently, there have been thousands of online comments saying that I am naive,” he told host Allison Kaplan Sommer on the Haaretz Podcast, in a conversation about his newly published book “The Holy and the Broken: a cry for Israeli-Palestinian peace from a land that must be shared.” 

After teaching about Israel and the Middle East in his native Australia, Flescher immigrated to Israel from Australia six years ago. Since then, he has brought together Israeli and Palestinian teens aged 12 to 16 through Kids4Peace, a program where they talk about religion, identity, history, learn each other’s languages, play games and attend summer camp. The goal of the exercise is for participants to “become less afraid of one another and build friendships and build trust.”

Since October 7, that work has become significantly much more challenging. In his book, he writes of these challenges – including a personal crisis of faith sparked by seeing Palestinian teens he worked with expressing support for the actions of Hamas on October 7 on social media. 

“I think anyone that works in peacebuilding and says nothing changed in the last year is not telling the truth,” he said. But at the same time, he stressed, “There are also hundreds of other stories of people who, as a result of these kinds of experiences and dialogue, are speaking out against October 7 if they're Palestinians. And Israelis who are speaking out against the destruction and bombing of Gaza.”

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Israel and Ireland are in the midst of a diplomatic crisis – with the Israeli embassy in Dublin closed in protest of Ireland’s decision to join South Africa’s genocide lawsuit at the International Court of Justice and its recognition of a Palestinian state.

But that didn’t stop the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv from inviting peace activist Bronagh Hinds to meet with Jewish and Palestinian civil society organizations and women’s groups to share the lessons learned in Northern Ireland and encourage them to take bold steps towards peace even as their leaders hesitate. 

Hines is best known for helping create a women's coalition that played a key role in the Good Friday agreement negotiations. On the Haaretz Podcast, Bronagh discussed her visit and the tense Israeli-Irish standoff. “In Ireland, people are sad about the shuttering and the breaking of the relationship,” she said, but “they also understand the Irish government's position.”

She noted that until the 1990’s, the ethnic and territorial conflicts in the world considered most intractable were Northern Ireland, South Africa and Israel and Palestine. “I'm not surprised that South Africa and Ireland did what they did, because in both of those conflicts, the issues of equality and the human rights and the humanitarian issues were extremely important … I truly believe that the Irish government is doing what it has done from an understanding about how one gets to a peace process.“ 

The process of reconciliation between peoples with a violent and traumatic history of conflict is deeply challenging, Hinds admitted, emphasizing that successful conflict resolution must be “as inclusive as possible.” In Northern Ireland, the Good Friday talks “included people who called their counterparts terrorists,” she said. “It’s all painful, but the prize is peace in the end.”

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With 59 hostages still in Gaza, both dead and alive, Jon Polin, the father of slain Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, doesn’t believe it’s appropriate for any Jew to have a festive Passover celebrating freedom this year. 

"The point," he says, "is let's lean into the pain this year, and not even try to sugarcoat it for our kids"

Polin and his wife Rachel became prominent international advocates for their son Hersh’s release until the tragic news of his murder by Hamas terrorists in an underground tunnel last August. The couple continue to advocate tirelessly for the release of the remaining hostages.

On the Haaretz Podcast, Polin spoke with host Allison Kaplan Sommer about how his family is facing their difficult first Passover Seder since Hersh’s death and how he believes others should treat the holiday.

“We've talked about symbolic things that people should do: Maybe put a lemon on your table. A lemon because it's yellow, the color of the hostage struggle, and because it's bitter - to reflect the bitterness that the hostages and their families and all the Jewish people are going through,” he said, also suggesting “instead of just dipping our greens in the salt water, let's drink some salt water, because we know from testimonies of recently released hostages that is what they are drinking." 

In recent weeks, Polin made headlines in Israel by calling for members of the coalition to refrain from wearing yellow ribbon pins symbolizing solidarity with hostage families and on the podcast, explained his rationale. 

“If you're in a position of authority and you are not willing to do the things necessary to bring home hostages, that's your political choice. But then, don't wear the pin.”

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Haaretz journalist Nir Hasson has been covering the war in Gaza for months. He has seen so many horrifying acts of war go unpunished and uninvestigated, that he was hardly surprised by the killing of 15 aid workers at the end of March that shocked the world.

The IDF first said the paramedics who were killed were suspicious, and claimed the vehicles they were in did not have their emergency lights on. Then a video of the incident was exposed to the world in the New York Times, showing clearly marked ambulances.  

“There is no accountability when it comes to commanders and soldiers killing innocents or even medical personnel,” Hasson said on the Haaretz Podcast. 

In his coverage of the army’s operations in Gaza and their effect on the Palestinian population, he regularly sends the IDF spokesperson questions about all kinds of incidents in Gaza. “I ask them: ‘You killed a family; You bombarded a school - what happened there?’ And I have received thousands of replies saying that it will be looked into in an internal investigation unit. But there are no results of any investigations. I don't know of any trial of any soldier who paid any price for killing innocents in Gaza.”

Alongside these disturbing military procedures regarding civilian killings, Hasson said, a “really terrifying humanitarian disaster” is brewing. 

“I sometimes find it hard to get to sleep because I'm thinking about the families and the kids in Gaza and the despair,” he told podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, in a conversation about his coverage of Gaza as well as the West Bank, where, he says, a new level of cooperation and coordination between the Israeli military and violent settlers is a “severe and frightening” development. 

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For Haaretz columnist Amir Tibon, the renewed fighting in Israel with hostages still in captivity, as scandal unfolds around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, represents a “nightmare scenario.”

Speaking on the Haaretz Podcast, Tibon reviewed the turbulent events of the past week with host Allison Kaplan Sommer – from the arrest of two of Netanyahu’s top aides in the deepening Qatargate affair and the questioning of the prime minister himself, to the botched attempt to replace embattled Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. 

Tibon pointed to the fact after the two-month reprieve of a cease-fire and hostage release in the first stage of the deal that Netanyahu subsequently abandoned, “we now find ourselves with 59 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in the tunnels of Gaza; Israeli troops on the ground; rockets are being fired at northern, southern and central Israel. And instead of dealing with the security needs of the country, we have a prime minister who is running from court to the police investigation. If I had written this three years ago in Haaretz as a scenario of what will happen under Netanyahu, everybody would have dismissed it as hateful anti-Bibi material – a nightmare scenario that will never come true. But this is what is happening right now."

Tibon added that Netanyahu’s lightning-quick reversal of his decision to appoint former naval commander Eli Sharvit as Shin Bet director was driven by “dissatisfaction” with his choice by the far-right wing of his own Likud party. The Prime Minister attributing the flip-flop to pressure from the Trump administration, he said, was “an absolute lie.” 

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