The Inside Story of How an Unlikely Trump-Biden Alliance Led to a Historic Gaza Ceasefire Agreement | The Israel-Gaza War

IIt was a subtle but significant power move from Donald Trump’s new envoy to the Middle East. Ten days before tomorrow’s presidential inauguration, he called Israel to announce that he was coming to Tel Aviv to meet Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump had demanded a deal to release Israel’s hostages before he took the oath of office, and the man charged with making it happen was Steve Witkoff—a New York real estate developer who was certain that a long relationship to Trump could compensate for a lack of diplomatic experience.

He landed last Saturday, in the middle of the Jewish Sabbath, when the Israeli prime minister does not undertake official duties. Netanyahu’s aides told Witkoff he would have to wait a few hours for a meeting.

Witkoff, who is Jewish, made it clear that would not happen. Trump was busy – and he wanted to continue with the mission.

Two days earlier, the president-elect had shared a video of economist Jeffrey Sachs calling Netanyahu a “deep, dark bastard”, just weeks after the Israeli leader claimed the two had a “heated” political discussion. Around the world, governments are recalibrating their policies to reflect Trump’s straightforward transactional approach to international relations – and Israel is no exception. Netanyahu took the meeting.

Trump’s first administration delivered key diplomatic concessions, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. But he does not have the ideological commitment of the outgoing president, Joe Biden, who has described himself as a Zionist.

In early December, Trump warned on social media – in all caps – that there would be “ALL HELVE TO PAY” if the hostages were not released by January 20.

At the beginning of the new year, Hamas provided a list of hostages who would be released in a deal Israel had long sought. It was taken as a sign that the group was serious about the talks.

When Witkoff sat down with Netanyahu, he made clear what Trump expected from his administration. He told the Israeli leader: “The president has been a great friend of Israel, and now it’s time to be a friend again,” he said. The Wall Street Journal reported.

After that meeting, Netanyahu ordered a delegation to Doha, Qatar, including spy chiefs and a top aide, with a mandate to strike a deal. It was the beginning of the last, unlikely stretch in the negotiations that had lasted more than a year.

Last Sunday, the talks began.

The two teams of negotiators left each day from their separate hotels for the same Qatari government residence, where they had rooms on separate floors to ensure they never came face to face.

The mediators – Qataris, Egyptians and Americans – shuttled between the two delegations during talks that stretched into the night, on the longest day that did not end until 10 p.m.

The deal appeared to be within reach on Wednesday, but a planned news conference with Qatar’s prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, was pushed back again and again as talks stalled.

When Thani finally stepped onto the podium in Doha early Wednesday night, it was only minutes after the deal had been agreed. Witkoff had been by his side throughout, reminding everyone – albeit by his presence – of Trump’s demands.

The incoming president wanted to mark his return to the White House with a display of American power and personal prestige.

It was clear that the war in Ukraine, which he had once boasted of ending in 24 hours, would need a little more time.

The cease-fire and hostage-release deal for Gaza, hammered out by Biden’s team months earlier but never sealed, offered a tantalizing alternative. It was just as high-profile but perhaps more achievable than a Ukrainian deal because it sought — for now — to pause the conflict in Gaza, not end it definitively.

The first phase allows for the release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners during a halt in fighting and an increase in aid to Gaza. The toughest questions about Gaza’s future, including how it will be governed and whether Israeli forces will maintain a foothold, have been left open to be resolved in the second phase of the talks.

It gave space to both Israel and Hamas to claim some kind of victory, while raising serious questions about how long the deal will last. But it will bring desperately needed relief to Palestinians in Gaza and the families of some hostages returning home.

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It made that goal enough to bring two American presidents into an unlikely but productive alliance. If both have rushed to claim the end of the war as their legacy, the reality is that it took both to finally push the agreement over the line.

It was more than a year in the making, with the broad details hammered out in December 2023, shortly after an earlier ceasefire and hostage release deal collapsed. In the months that followed, Biden’s team hammered out more details and in May announced it to the world, demanding Israeli support and getting UN approval.

Then the negotiations broke down, in a “maelstrom” of acceptance and rejection, where every small shift in language to bring the more reluctant side on board pushed the other side away. At one point, the Qataris said they were withdrawing from mediation that appeared to be going nowhere.

A senior US administration official defended the Biden team’s months-long effort to secure a ceasefire, saying events disrupted talks several times when a deal seemed within reach, including the death of six hostages in a tunnel under Gaza in August .

At that time, “we basically concluded that as long as (Hamas leader and military commander) Yahya Sinwar was alive, we will not get an agreement on a ceasefire release of hostages,” the official said.

A few months later, Sinwar and Lebanon-based Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had both been killed, and Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad had fled Syria. It allowed the US to squeeze Hamas in a “significantly transformed” region, where the militant group understood that the “cavalry” was not coming to help it.

After Trump’s election victory, Biden suggested that the two should work together on a deal. The final push was “historically almost unprecedented and it was a very constructive, very fruitful partnership” between the two camps, the administration official said.

The agreement, they said, “was the fruit of many months, really, over a year of developments in the Middle East and extensive, extraordinary diplomacy”.

US and Israeli outlets reported that Netanyahu received US concessions to sign the deal, including a promise that he will have US support to continue the war in Gaza if negotiations on a second phase of the deal fail, and a promise to withdraw US sanctions against settlers and extremists. groups.

Both could help quell opposition from far-right cabinet ministers who have vowed the war can only end with the “destruction” of Hamas. Their parties support Netanyahu’s government.

But there has been no confirmation that Trump has offered Netanyahu a quid pro quo for the deal, and analysis has instead focused on the political dynamics at play between the two men.

The Israeli prime minister is “afraid” to antagonize Trump, according to a European diplomat.

“They have had maximum support during this war and what comes next is not so certain,” the diplomat said. “They have to work with Trump now. At least in the beginning.”