Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly sidelined his intelligence chiefs in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations, replacing them with a key political ally, Ron Dermer. The shake-up came when Netanyahu arrived in Washington to meet with President Donald Trump, the first foreign leader to do so since Trump returned to office. Rather than relying on intelligence officials to steer the negotiations, Netanyahu is prioritizing direct American intervention to secure terms favorable to Israel.
Until this week, the ceasefire talks had been led by Shin Bet director Ronen Bar and Mossad director David Barnea. But upon his arrival in Washington, Netanyahu made the surprise decision to remove them from their roles and hand the process to Dermer, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and one of his closest confidants.
Dermer’s appointment to replace Bar and Barnea marks a deliberate shift in Israel’s approach. Bar and Barnea had each leveraged their connections in Doha and Cairo to facilitate indirect talks with Hamas. But Netanyahu’s decision to replace them with Dermer—an American-born Israeli who renounced his U.S. citizenship to enter Israeli politics—suggests a pivot away from regional mediators like Qatar and Egypt and toward Washington as the primary broker of the next phase of the ceasefire deal.
Despite being relatively unknown outside diplomatic circles, Dermer has been one of Netanyahu’s most trusted confidants for years, holding significant sway over U.S. policy toward Israel. His ties to American politics made him indispensable to Netanyahu, so much so that the Israeli leader once floated Dermer as his potential successor in 2019. However, his Miami Beach upbringing has made him unpopular among some Israelis, who view him as an outsider.
By installing Dermer to head the ceasefire negotiations, Netanyahu is signaling that he hopes to shift the process away from the Arab world’s involvement and place it firmly in the hands of the United States, where Israel can exert its substantial influence.
A product of America who grew up attending a Jewish Day School with the notorious Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Dermer holds considerable weight in negotiating deals with Washington. His brother David Dermer held public office as Mayor of Miami Beach while he pursued an Israel-centric political career instead.
This is the same Ron Dermer who sat behind Netanyahu in 2002 when he offered Congress a “guarantee” that invading Iraq would have “enormous positive reverberations for the region” and removing Saddam would not create a vacuum Islamist militants would fill pic.twitter.com/CX7zwZ6CKc https://t.co/GBw5VybWcR
— Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) March 17, 2024
Dermer’s political career traces back to his time as a protégé of Frank Luntz, the University of Pennsylvania professor and Republican pollster best known for shaping political messaging. Luntz, a longtime strategist for conservative causes, is perhaps most infamous for his authorship of the 112-page Luntz Report, officially titled “The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary.”
Marked “not for distribution or publication,” the document is a meticulous propaganda manual that instructs Israeli officials and journalists on crafting messaging that resonates with American audiences. The guide offers talking points to frame Israel’s actions in a way that appeals to U.S. public opinion.
In 2005, Ron Dermer formally renounced his American citizenship to take a position as Israel’s economic attaché in Washington. Two years later, he was appointed Minister of Economic Affairs under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, marking his entry into Israel’s cabinet and his first official collaboration with Benjamin Netanyahu.
By 2010, Dermer had made his name in Washington. Politico dubbed him the “key Mideast go-between,” and former Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman described him as someone whose “life epitomizes the relationship between Israel and America.”
Ron Dermer – charged with the responsibility of “thinning out” Palestinians in Gaza – is also an American, from Miami.
He’s the former Israeli Ambassador to US & was key in the Abraham Accords, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, ending JCPOA & getting the $38Bn aid to Israel. https://t.co/at3IUwH3NJ
— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) December 1, 2023
From 2013 to 2021, Dermer served as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, a role that made him one of Netanyahu’s most trusted emissaries in Washington. The Jerusalem Post once described him as “the closest thing to actually having the prime minister in Washington,” a nod to his access and influence in U.S. political circles.
Dermer played a central role in securing long-term American military aid to Israel. In 2007, he helped negotiate a 10-year memorandum of understanding on U.S. assistance. Nearly a decade later, in 2016, he successfully brokered another agreement—despite deep tensions between Netanyahu and the Obama administration over the Iran Nuclear Deal. That deal saw President Obama commit to a $38 billion military aid package to Israel, the largest such agreement in U.S. history.
When Trump took office in 2017, Dermer acted quickly to cement U.S. policy in Israel’s favor. He played a central role in securing Washington’s recognition of occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, orchestrating the Abraham Accords, and advancing the so-called “Deal of the Century”—a plan that sought to extinguish Palestinian statehood. The U.S. recognition of Israel’s claim over the Golan Heights was, at least in part, his handiwork.
Dermer’s influence extended beyond policy. In the final weeks of Trump’s first term, Dermer reportedly convinced the president to pardon Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel. His reach into American conservative circles was cemented when he appeared on media platforms like Jordan Peterson’s podcast in 2022, where he was given a friendly platform free of scrutiny.
Throughout the 15-month-long Gaza war, Dermer remained a liaison between Netanyahu’s government and the Biden administration. In November 2024, just six days after Trump’s election victory, he made a quiet visit to Mar-a-Lago. Now, with Netanyahu appointing him as Israel’s chief negotiator in the ceasefire talks, Dermer is positioned as the Israeli leader’s most effective conduit to Washington—tasked not just with managing negotiations but with ensuring that the U.S. continues to back Israel even more aggressively and unconditionally than before.
Feature photo | President Donald Trump talks with U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council Chairman Tom Bernstein, center and Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 25, 2017, during the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s National Days of Remembrance ceremony. Pablo Martinez Monsivais | AP
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
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