How Trump made the Hamas-Israel ceasefire deal happen

After days of increasing optimism, Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani summoned the press last night to announce that Israel and Hamas had agreed on a ceasefire and hostage deal. In the hours since, Israel has accused Hamas of backtracking on the agreement and dozens of people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza. A planned cabinet vote on the deal in Israel has been pushed back, yet Hamas insists it is still committed to the agreement, which is due to come into effect on Sunday.

The deal is complicated, delicate and full of moving parts. Phase one will see Hamas release thirty-three hostages, both living and dead: the old, the sick and women, including female soldiers. In return, Israel will release hundreds of terrorists including murderers, implement a six-week ceasefire in Gaza, withdraw from parts of the Strip and allow more aid to flow.

It doesn’t feel like the absolute victory that Netanyahu promised Israelis again and again

During that ceasefire, the parties will negotiate phase two, which would include releasing all remaining hostages, a major Israeli withdrawal, an end to the war and the beginning of reconstruction, presumably with Hamas leaders going into exile and an alternative government ruling Gaza.

If the deal sounds familiar, that’s because it’s essentially identical to the proposal that President Joe Biden announced back in May. That proposal formed the basis for some serious negotiations, but they fell apart in the face of both Hamas intransigence and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden insistence that Israeli troops would need to hold Gaza’s border with Egypt.

So what changed? Most proximately, the election of Donald Trump and his imminent return to the White House.

One big factor that held Israel back from signing a deal before was the idea that “Trump is coming.” With Joe Biden flagging in the polls, Netanyahu and the politicians to his Right thought they would wait out Biden and then Trump would give them a free hand. This strategy took a knock when Kamala Harris replaced Biden as the presidential candidate, but Trump’s win seemed to put it back on track.

Netanyahu was, perhaps, surprised when Trump and his people, particularly his envoy Steve Witkoff, pushed him to sign the deal Biden had put together. Trump campaigned on a promise to stop the war in Gaza, winning Muslim votes in Michigan while pro-Israel campaigners insisted he didn’t really mean it. Well, he meant it. One Arab source told the media that pressure from Trump and Witkoff on Israel got this deal past one major hurdle.

The other huge change since May was the short but intense war in Lebanon. After the October 7 attacks, Hamas assumed Hezbollah would join their war against Israel with full force. Instead, the Lebanese militia contented itself with firing rockets to “keep on the pressure,” but Hamas still hoped for a war in the north that would split Israel’s attention.

A year later, they got their wish, but in a monkey’s paw kind of way: after exploding pagers, the utter destruction of its leadership and the loss of its armory forced Hezbollah into a humiliating ceasefire.

That ceasefire, which showed the weakness of Iran and its proxies, was a key domino that led to the collapse of the sudden and dramatic Assad regime in Syria. With Hezbollah neutered and Assad gone, Iran’s regional influence has been clipped, with its own missile program in tatters after the Israeli Air Force destroyed all of their planetary mixers. All of this puts Hamas in a much weaker position than last summer. Their allies are beaten and spent.

Perhaps none of this would have influenced Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who planned the madness of the October 7 attacks and resolutely refused any compromise, driven by a messianic vision of fighting to the last drop of Palestinian blood. But Sinwar, too, is dead, killed in a random encounter with patrolling Israeli soldiers in Rafah in October.

In this new reality, Mohammed Sinwar, now one of Hamas’s key leaders in Gaza, has made a different calculation to his brother. Faced also with the prospect of an Israel unconstrained by Joe Biden’s humanitarian aid demands, Sinwar and the rest of the Hamas leadership have also accepted the deal they rejected before.

Ultimately, neither side wanted to be blamed for turning down the deal

Ultimately, neither side wanted to be blamed for turning down the deal, risking the anger of a soon-to-be-president who demanded “peace” by his upcoming inauguration. But for Netanyahu, there will be domestic consequences.

Far-right coalition partner Itamar Ben Gvir, who serves as internal security minister, is very likely to quit Netanyahu’s government along with his Jewish Power Party in opposition to the deal. Bezalel Smotrich, finance minister, may also walk, and is demanding that Israel return to fighting in Gaza after phase one as his price for remaining in the coalition, which would scrap phase two and renege on parts of the deal. If both parties leave, Netanyahu’s government would lose its majority. 

The opposition parties have promised Netanyahu a “safety net” that would keep him in power long enough to see the deal implemented, but such a move would set the stage for an early general election, perhaps in the second half of 2025. Netanyahu may be gambling that ending the war will win him back enough centrist votes to win again if he goes to the country. 

This deal is fragile. Phase one will probably be completed but the hard questions are in phase two. Will Hamas agree to hand over the government of Gaza and to whom? How can Gaza be rebuilt while preventing Hamas from rearming?

It doesn’t feel like the absolute victory that Netanyahu promised Israelis again and again. But the release of dozens of hostages after more than 465 days will be a real victory nonetheless.