ultranationalist

However, Netanyahu is backed by hard-line religious ultranationalist parties who have threatened to collapse the government if he ends the war.

It has long been a desire of the ultranationalist far right in Israel to expel Palestinians from the occupied territories and expand Jewish settlements in their place.

Much of Netanyahu's political base and the ultranationalist settler movement in Israel will champion President Trump's words, seeing them as the fulfilment of a means as Netanyahu puts it to stop "Gaza being a threat to Israel".

He cut through the delaying tactics that Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in alliance with his ultranationalist coalition partners, had used to avoid accepting the ceasefire deal that Joe Biden put on the negotiating table last May.

But the Israeli government denies that it plans to build settlements in Gaza once the war ends, and Dr Hecht dismissed such suggestions as nothing more than a "dream" for some ultranationalist ministers.