by Amichai Stein
A candid interview with Yechiel Leiter, Israel's ambassador to the US, on Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan and Washington's relations with Turkey and Arab nations.
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Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, has largely kept out of the spotlight since President Donald Trump unveiled his 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of all remaining hostages.
In a rare, wide-ranging interview conducted via Zoom, Leiter speaks with unusual candor about the plan’s strategic logic, Israel’s red lines, and the region’s uncertain “day after.”
He also addresses a changing diplomatic map in Jerusalem and Washington as Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer steps down and Leiter becomes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s principal conduit to the White House.
Calm, exacting, and unsentimental, Leiter returns again and again to one theme: strategic patience.
“We have a habit, a national pastime, of getting hysterical and seeking immediate solutions,” he says. “Patience, stick to the course. This approach, if we keep our eye on the ball, promises to be much more successful than what we had until now.”
“Look at the big picture,” he says. “The United States incorporated our basic demands into the 20-point plan. Ask where we will be in six months, where we will be in a year. Have we advanced to the complete disarming of Hamas?”
If the answer is yes, he contends, “that is a diplomatic success” and the measure by which Israelis should judge the coming months.
‘Our basic demands are in the plan’
Asked whether Israel’s strategic goals match Washington’s, Leiter says “Yes. The Trump administration incorporated our basic demands into the 20-point plan. And that’s what’s key.” Those demands, as he outlines them, are unambiguous: “to decommission Hamas and to demilitarize and de-radicalize Gaza.”The contours of Trump’s initiative, announced in late September, place disarmament and the full return of living and deceased hostages at the center, coupled with a staged Israeli withdrawal and a transitional technocratic administration in Gaza under robust international oversight.
Israel publicly backed the plan, while Hamas wavered over core requirements on disarmament and governance, leaving implementation fragile and dependent on strict sequencing and enforcement.
Leiter’s focus is on the end state. “At some point you look up and ask, ‘Are they disarmed?’” he says. “That is the point.”
Leiter hears the public anxiety about timelines, about enforcement, about what Hamas will look like if not fully dismantled. He counsels Israelis to resist panic.
“A little less hysteria and a little bit more sobriety,” he says, repeating the mantra. “We swerve this way, we swerve that way. Patience. Stick to the course.”
This insistence is rooted in an Israeli strategic memory, he says, not wishful thinking. Israel took “full responsibility for Gaza” for decades, then withdrew. The question now is whether Israel and its allies “will finally see the disarming of Hamas and the end of its capacity to regenerate.”
A regional frame: Reform, normalization, and the ‘soul of Islam’
Leiter widens the aperture to the region. The ambassador rejects the notion that normalization is intended as a symbolic “poke in the eye” to extremists.“It’s not about provocation,” he says. “It’s about transformation. It’s a theological change, the willingness to live side by side.”
He mentions Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain as states whose choices can anchor a broader realignment.
Then he says something that reveals the intellectual formation behind the diplomat. Citing Princeton historian Bernard Lewis, Leiter frames a civilizational struggle inside Islam itself.
“Accommodation with Israel means accommodation with the West,” he says. “The big question is, who will win the battle for the soul of Islam?” Reform, he notes, means “the function of living side by side with Judeo-Christian civilization.”
It is an old scholarly argument, expressed here with the practicality of a policy hand who still reads.
On Iran and its network of proxies, Leiter signals confidence in the alignment between Jerusalem and Washington. Without divulging operational details, he says, “We are on the same track, absolutely.”
He adds, in a pointed aside, that if certain terrorist groups “start rebuilding,” the president “is going to act militarily again.” It is a matter-of-fact line that underscores the message he conveys throughout the interview: Deterrence is real, it is being felt, and it will be enforced.
“We understand the strategic importance of Turkey to the United States,” he says. “It’s a NATO member, a large army, a key geography. And we don’t challenge that.”
But, he adds, “We can’t have Turkish troops in Gaza or Syria. And those practical demands haven’t been challenged by the United States; they’ve been accepted.
“We would prefer that Turkey not receive F-35s from the US.” Leiter stresses that Israel made its position clear: “We don’t think it’s constructive at this time. The United States will make its decision accordingly.”
Despite these gaps, Leiter emphasizes that the differences have not led to a crisis between the two allies. “We don’t have a point of contention right now. That’s what diplomacy is for. We explain our position, we appreciate our ally’s position, and we work out a practical relationship.”
He also dismisses concerns about a possible US-Saudi F-35 deal and other weapons deals between Washington and Arab countries. “There’s no indication that Israel’s qualitative edge will be compromised,” he says.
Leiter rejects the idea that Israel should be haunted by every new arms package in the region.
“We don’t live in fear,” he says. “Why would I live in fear that our qualitative edge is going to be compromised? There’s no reason to assume it will be.”
The “primary bond” between Israel and the United States, he continues, “is a bond of interest, as deep and as wide, as sincere and as permanent as Israel.”
The phrasing is emphatic. The message is that Israel’s qualitative military edge is safeguarded not only by statutes and policy but also by a shared strategic worldview.
Republican crosscurrents and Israel’s lane
What about the isolationist voices on the American Right, including a handful who have argued that the United States has “no interest” in the Middle East?Leiter refuses to personalize the debate. “I do not want to deal with people,” he says. “I just deal with policy.”
Then he offers a statement he repeats in diplomatic meetings in Washington: “The United States has interests in the Middle East, and there are few allies as important as Israel.”
“We’ve never asked for American boots on the ground,” he says, adding that “we do it ourselves. And that serves American interests.”
He cites former US Air Force Gen. George Keegan’s line that without Israel, America would need “five CIAs.” “That’s tens of billions of dollars,” Leiter says. “Our collaboration, from the Iron Dome to F-35 combat data, is unparalleled.”
“This is not about the Jewish lobby,” he adds pointedly. “The primary bond between our two countries is a bond of interests.”
One of the most moving remarks in the conversation comes when Leiter speaks about the importance of returning the bodies of the dead, alongside the living hostages.
“I explain in every meeting the importance of our dead hostages,” he says. “Jews are significant in life and in death.” He describes the Jewish imperative to mark graves, to count the lost by name, and to refuse anonymity. “There is no Auschwitz anymore,” he says quietly. “We do not allow for Auschwitz. There is value to be recognized, and the Jewish lives matter.”
It is a statement that fuses theology, history, and diplomacy, and it helps explain why the return of the fallen is written into the American plan.
Leiter is equally candid about Egypt, saying it is “high time” for direct trilateral talks between Cairo, Jerusalem, and Washington. “We need to get into the same room,” he says. “There are unresolved issues regarding Sinai, Gaza, and our bilateral relations. It’s been too long since President [Abdel Fattah] al-Sisi and Prime Minister Netanyahu have met. Egypt has to agree; it can’t be postponed any longer.”
Leiter, careful not to reveal classified details, says only this about the Gaza-Egypt frontier: “Egypt has got to agree to do it; it cannot be pushed off any longer.”
The context is the Rafah crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor, which the Israel Defense Forces secured during this war to cut smuggling routes. Any sustainable ceasefire requires Egyptian cooperation, new inspection regimes, and a border architecture that denies Hamas rearmament. That reality is acknowledged across Washington policy circles and in the regional debate.
The ambassador does not elaborate on Egypt’s alleged violations of the 1979 peace treaty, but in a public speech in February 2025 Leiter declared that “Egypt is building bases in Sinai for offensive operations, thereby violating the peace accords.”
“We’ve had peace with Egypt for half a century,” he notes in this interview. “Yet no Jew feels safe walking the streets of Cairo, while a Jew can walk through Abu Dhabi and feel secure. That needs to change.”
Jerusalem’s diplomatic machinery is also shifting. Dermer, Netanyahu’s most trusted strategist and architect of many of Israel’s high-stakes negotiations with Washington, is stepping down. Cabinet responsibilities that touch the US file will, according to Israeli officials, move in part to Leiter, who already sits at the nexus between the Prime Minister’s Office and the White House. That makes him, in effect, the primary broker of the US-Israel channel at a delicate hour.
“Strength and assertiveness,” he says of Dermer, “even while he is weaving the art of diplomacy.” Then he moves on, eager to talk substance.
Disarming of Hamas
Leiter’s American cadence is not accidental. Born and raised in the United States, he speaks fluent, idiomatic English and understands Washington’s rhythms from the inside. Before arriving in Washington as ambassador in January, he spent decades in Israel’s public policy ecosystem, advising leaders and helping shape domestic and foreign policy. Colleagues describe a tireless work ethic and a refusal to let small provocations distract from large goals.Leiter’s yardstick is simple: disarmament first, then stabilization and reconstruction under a technocratic umbrella that keeps terrorists out of power and keeps weapons out of Gaza.
The plan’s sequencing demands discipline. The enforcement demands coordination. The politics demands patience.
“Ask where we will be in six months,” he repeats. “Have we advanced to the complete disarming of Hamas?”
He rejects the false binary between military victory and diplomatic progress. The 20-point plan, as he sees it, is a platform to finish the war’s core task – destroying Hamas’s military capacity, without squandering the gains through a chaotic, premature exit. It is also a framework to reknit US-Israel trust around concrete, verifiable benchmarks rather than rhetorical maximalism. That is why the return of hostages, living and dead, sits alongside demilitarization and why the border with Egypt is not an afterthought.
Leiter is aware of how Israelis read moments like this, how every rumor and every leak ricochets through a country with a 24-hour news metabolism and a hair-trigger panic reflex. “We swerve this way, we swerve that way,” he says again, almost with affection. “Patience.”
He is not asking Israelis to hide their own criticism. He is asking them to hold the map in their hands and track the journey step by step as weapons are collected, as tunnels are destroyed, as border controls harden, as hostages come home, as schools reopen, as a different Gaza, with a different political grammar, emerges. That’s his strategy.
In Washington, Leiter’s calendar is already crowded. The next phase will require relentless shuttle diplomacy with the administration, Congress, and think tanks, as well as with Arab embassies that will be central to postwar stabilization. It will also require a conversation with American Jewish leaders who have been pulled, sometimes painfully, into campus and community battles that mirror the war’s narratives. Leiter’s American upbringing enables him to cross these worlds with ease.
As Dermer transitions out, the ambassador will absorb more of the most sensitive, high-stakes conversations between Netanyahu and Trump.
The timing could hardly be more consequential. With implementation steps progressing in fits and starts, the real test is whether the plan will transition from paper to practice.
Israel, Leiter says, is prepared to do its part. The message to Hamas is unequivocal: Disarm, release the hostages, accept a different future for Gaza, or face a renewed military campaign with even fewer options.
Leiter, whose son Maj. Moshe Yedidia Leiter, 39, was killed in battle in the northern Gaza Strip, says that much of his very presence in Washington stems from his son’s courage.
“He accompanies me on this journey, in his own way,” says the ambassador. “I see myself as a messenger not only for him but for all the soldiers: those who gave their lives, and those who have been fighting over the past two years. Although a military ceasefire may be in place, there is no ceasefire on the diplomatic front. I must keep fighting to ensure that their sacrifice is honored, and that the goals for which they gave their lives are fulfilled.”
In the final minutes of the interview, Leiter apologizes, smiles, and returns to his theme. “A little less hysteria,” he says, “and a little more sobriety.” It is not a plea. It is a policy.
Amichai Stein
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-873730
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