A Gaza cease-fire deal came close to an agreement when it was on the table six months ago. Had it been sealed then, both parties would have been spared a great deal of suffering. Donald Trump’s team injected new momentum into the talks, and Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, is presumed to have caved to the turbo-charged pressure from Washington.
From Jerusalem to Doha and back via Cairo, Steve Witkoff has been touring the Middle East for weeks on end, albeit not in any diplomatic capacity. Nevertheless, official residences all over the region opened their doors to Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. The changed political reality in Washington endowed the New York billionaire real estate mogul’s mission with the authority to push for a Gaza deal a matter of days before he officially takes up his new role. The turbo-charged influence of self-professed deal-maker, President-elect Trump, effectively powered him on his way.
And now the negotiators have obtained a breakthrough in a rare co-production choreographed by two entirely different U.S. presidents, Joe Biden and Trump. The deadline, tied to Inauguration Day in Washington on Jan. 20, created the dynamic.
Echoes of the 1981 Talks To Free the US Hostages in Iran
From Barack Obama and John Kerry to Biden and Antony Blinken, many a U.S. president and secretary of state have despaired at Benjamin Netanyahu’s unbudging hardline stance. Witkoff, on the other hand, treated the recalcitrant Israeli prime minister just as if he were another business partner refusing to close a deal. The Biden team, which had been painstakingly working out the details of an agreement after an initial hostage deal 14 months earlier, was astute enough to involve Trump’s emissary, with all his business interests in Qatar and the Gulf States, in the talks.
And it sufficed to shift the dial. Not without echoes of the protracted negotiations between the U.S. and Iran to free the hostages held in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, as Jimmy Carter prepared the hand over to Ronald Reagan in 1981.
The Biden Team’s Blueprint
How long would Netanyahu keep making feeble excuses to get out of a meeting with relatives of the hostages, while insisting Israel needed a military presence in the so-called Philadelphi Corridor in the southern Gaza Strip? How long would he keep banging on about a full list of the hostages? After all, Israel’s opposition parties had assured him of their support in the event that the extreme right-wing coalition partners moved to bring down the government, as they threatened.
Last spring, U.S. President Biden presented the broad outlines of a deal which became the blueprint for the current one. While an agreement seemed within reach at that time, it was ultimately blocked by Hamas and Netanyahu refusing to accept certain details. Some six months later, these stumbling blocks have fallen away following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last October and Trump’s election victory. The Israeli hostage families and, above all, the Palestinian civilian population could have been spared so much suffering. Instead, Israel’s premier used the interregnum between presidents in Washington to play for time.
An End to the War in Gaza Is Long Overdue
Israel should have finally ended the war after the terror architect of Oct. 7, 2023, Sinwar, was killed. Their war aims had been largely achieved: Hamas’ leader had been taken out, its terrorist infrastructure substantially destroyed, and its terrorist organization massively weakened, while its Iranian patrons had also sustained severe damage.
Yet, Netanyahu continued to wage the war in Gaza, indifferent to internal and external critics alike. He declined to offer any routes out of the conflict. Nearing the end of his tenure, Secretary of State Blinken drafted a post-war reconstruction plan as a sort of personal legacy. It envisages the autonomous Palestinian Authority taking control of the devastated Gaza coastal strip, with the backing of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. It further holds out the longer-term prospect of the Palestinians having their own state, which runs counter to Netanyahu’s objectives. The Trump team will clearly have to build on this draft plan if they are to close in on the bigger deal they seek with the Saudis.
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