U.S. President Donald Trump attends the Gaza International Peace Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Monday.Suzanne Plunkett/The Associated Press
For the last two years, when Israelis or diaspora Jews would talk about bringing the last living hostages home, there was a belief their spoken words would never betray: the hostages would not come home. Not all of them. Not all at once.
The hostages were too valuable to Hamas, serving as their only real bargaining chip in a war that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) will win on strength, military intelligence and strategy every time. In 2011, Israel exchanged 1,027 prisoners for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas and held in captivity for five years. So what concessions could Hamas extract holding onto a handful now?
But on Monday, what was once unthinkable actually happened: all 20 of the last living Israeli hostages were returned home. And in exchange, Hamas got an end to Israel’s bombing campaign and the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. It did not, notably, secure the withdrawal of the IDF which, for now, still controls 53 per cent of the Gaza Strip.
How? And why now? What convinced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sign onto a peace deal where the “day-after” plan – of demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, of the destruction of Hamas’s terror tunnels, of transitional government by Palestinian technocrats – is hardly guaranteed, particularly with the professed goal of “destroying Hamas” yet incomplete? And why would Hamas agree to a ceasefire deal where they give up all their hostages at once, agree to forfeit their weapons, their infrastructure and their power, and only then see the IDF withdraw completely from Gaza?
The necessary element was Donald Trump. The U.S. President is running his administration like a despotic regime, but in this one specific case, he really was the broker of peace. The first phase of this ceasefire simply could not have happened without him.
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Israeli columnist Gershon Baskin, who was involved in negotiations during Joe Biden’s time in the White House, said recently that a nearly identical deal was put on the table in September, 2024 (albeit with a phased return of Israeli hostages, more of whom were alive at the time), but it was rejected by Mr. Netanyahu. According to Mr. Baskin, the Israelis were waiting for a change in U.S. administration before they would consider terms for a permanent ceasefire.
The geopolitical situation in the Middle East has changed since then; Hamas is isolated from its regional allies in Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, who have been weakened by Israeli attacks. Mr. Netanyahu was also facing ever-intensifying internal pressure to end the war and finally bring the hostages home. But Mr. Trump was the necessary element to get it done.
Mr. Trump offers something of an intangible guarantee; his support for Israel has been unwavering, even as allies, including Canada, lined up to declare their recognition of a Palestinian state. And unlike Mr. Biden, who entertained the prospect of an arms embargo, Mr. Trump has actually fast-tracked arms deliveries to Israel. When Israelis say that Mr. Trump is the “best friend” they have ever had in the White House, they really mean it. They would not trust another President to implement this kind of deal.
This is meaningful to Hamas, too, which has seen that Mr. Trump’s close personal relationship with Mr. Netanyahu has also been leveraged to apply pressure on the Israeli Prime Minister, who made a call at Mr. Trump’s behest to the Qatari Prime Minister to apologize for his failed strike in Doha in early September. That offers some assurances to Hamas that Mr. Trump will force the Israelis to stick to their terms of the deal, though certainly the co-ordinated pressure from regional players – Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, as orchestrated by the White House – was instrumental in getting Hamas to sign onto the ceasefire.
But that wasn’t all: there’s a compelling factor in Mr. Trump himself – his unpredictability, erraticism, his willingness to cross red lines. Mr. Trump wanted a peace deal, and he warned that “all hell” would break out against Hamas if the group did not agree to “this last-chance agreement.” Hamas didn’t want to risk that he was serious; Mr. Trump sent B2 stealth fighters to aid in Israel’s military operation in Iran in June, after all. What would he do in Gaza?
Mr. Trump was the essential element that got the first phase of this peace deal done. The rest is hardly guaranteed (indeed, an easily bored President who is more interested in adoring headlines than enduring hard work could soon lose interest in the deal altogether), but he nevertheless succeeded in ending the bombing, and bringing the last living hostages home. Loathe him as one might for his cacophony of destructive and chaotic behaviours, on this essential step toward Middle East peace, Donald Trump got it done.