WASHINGTON: The Gaza ceasefire clinched Wednesday was a bittersweet victory for US President Joe Biden days before he hands over the White House to Donald Trump, who claimed credit \u2014 and, most experts say, deserves some.
\nBiden first proposed the outlines of the deal between Israel and Hamas on May 31 but diplomatic efforts repeatedly came up short, even when Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in Tel Aviv in August that it may have been the last chance for a deal.
\nTrump\u2019s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff marched into Netanyahu\u2019s office on Saturday, forcing the Israeli leader to break the sabbath, and pushed to seal the ceasefire.
\nThe timing has echoes of a 1981 deal on US hostages in Iran, freed from 444 days of captivity moments after Republican Ronald Reagan succeeded Democrat Jimmy Carter, although this time the outgoing and incoming administrations worked together.
\nIn scenes unprecedented in recent US history, Witkoff and Biden\u2019s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk met jointly with the emir of Qatar \u2014 a key intermediary between Israel and Hamas \u2014 when sealing the deal.
\nTrump quickly boasted that the \u201cepic\u201d deal \u201ccould only have happened\u201d due to his election as US president in November.
\nAsked if Trump deserved credit, Biden quipped: \u201cIs that a joke?\u201c
\nSpeaking hours before a previously scheduled farewell address to the nation, the outgoing president said he included the Trump team in negotiations so that the United States was \u201cspeaking with one voice.\u201d
\nWhite House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it was not unexpected for all sides to seek credit for positive news.
\n\u201cWhat I can say is, the president got it done,\u201d she said, referring to Biden.
\nState Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the Trump team\u2019s presence was about demonstrating \u201ccontinuity\u201d rather than the Republican exerting new pressure.
\nBiden faced heated criticism from the left of his Democratic Party during its unsuccessful election year over his staunch support of Israel since Palestinian group Hamas\u2019s October 7, 2023, attack.
\nBiden authorized billions of dollars in weapons for Israel\u2019s relentless retaliatory campaign on Gaza, despite criticizing the strategic US ally for the civilian death toll \u2014 which authorities in Gaza say is in the tens of thousands.
\n\u201cThe Biden administration was terrified of the political cost of being seen to be pressing Israel in any way,\u201d said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now.
\nTrump, while vowing to be even more pro-Israel, was able to make clear to Netanyahu that \u201cI do not want to inherit this,\u201d Whitson said.
\n\u201cIt made me think that all of this would have been possible months ago and we could have saved thousands of Palestinian lives,\u201d she said.
\nTrump had warned Hamas of \u201chell to pay\u201d if it did not agree to a deal, which includes in its first phase the release of 33 hostages seized on October 7.
\nDavid Khalfa, an expert on Israel at the Jean Jaures Foundation in Paris, said that Trump\u2019s unpredictability likely impacted Hamas.
\nHe also pointed to Netanyahu\u2019s political position heading a hard-right but shaky coalition government.
\n\u201cThere is today an ideological alignment between the American populist right and the Israeli prime minister. So he has very weak room to maneuver against a Trump who doesn\u2019t face the pressures of reelection,\u201d said Khalfa.
\nBrian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said a desire by Israel and others for the right optics as Trump takes over could have played a role in sealing the deal.
\nBut a larger factor than Trump was the changing dynamics in the region \u2014 the major blows inflicted both on Hamas and its patron Iran, he said.
\nIsrael has devastated Iranian ally Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran\u2019s own air defenses, with Tehran\u2019s main ally in the Arab world, Syria\u2019s Bashar Assad, ousted last month by rebel forces.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t think any of the threats and bluster that we saw from Trump were a huge factor on either side. I think it\u2019s mostly a baby that\u2019s fathered by Biden and his team,\u201d Katulis said.
\n\u201cBut I think the sense that there were big question marks on what was coming might have motivated those who were stonewalling,\u201d he said.
\nJon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that the uncertainty following Trump\u2019s victory contributed to the deal.
\nIsrael and Hamas were negotiating \u201cunder the terms that each side had become familiar with\u201d and knew there was a high risk \u201cthat the parameters were about to change.\u201d
\nAnd if the deal falls apart?
\n\u201cThen it doesn\u2019t matter who implemented it; there will be plenty of blame to go around,\u201d Alterman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The Gaza ceasefire clinched Wednesday was a bittersweet victory for US President Joe Biden days before he hands over the White House to Donald Trump, who claimed credit \u2014 and, most experts say, deserves some. Biden first proposed the outlines of the deal between Israel and Hamas on May 31 but diplomatic efforts repeatedly …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75721,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75703\/revisions\/75721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}