The Trump Factor: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Appears Close

Donald Trump's decisive role in pushing forward the potential ceasefire is evidence that Joe Biden refused to use his full powers as president.

Donald Trump addresses annual Israeli American Council in Washington. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The prospect for an agreement to halt Israel’s war against the Palestinians of Gaza is at its most promising point in over a year. Sources close to Hamas’s negotiating team tell Drop Site News that on Monday Hamas agreed to the framework text—including an exchange of captives and hostages—and had not requested any significant changes or amendments. But the devil, as always, is in the details.

“Many of the obstacles have been ironed out,” said Majed al-Ansari, the spokesperson for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, in a press conference in Doha where the negotiations are taking place. “There are many pending issues, part of which is related to the implementation. We believe we have minimized many of the disagreements between both parties, and current discussions are focused on final details.”

“We are the closest than at any time in the past to a deal,” Ansari added. “This war should have been over a long time ago.”

Palestinian negotiators told Drop Site they remain cautiously optimistic a deal will be signed, though they point to previous rounds of ceasefire negotiations that saw Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insert new demands in the eleventh hour, effectively sabotaging the agreements. “I hope Netanyahu won’t play the same game of the last 15 months,” said one Palestinian source. Al-Ansari, the Qatari official, also alluded to the fragile nature of the discussions and past experience with Netanyahu. “The most minute detail can undermine the negotiation,” he said. “It is not about how big or small an issue is.”

What is different this time, however, is that President-elect Donald Trump has made very clear his demand that a deal be reached before his inauguration on January 20. The terms of the deal being negotiated are largely consistent with what was on the table last May when outgoing President Joe Biden first announced it. Biden allowed Netanyahu to steamroll him for months—rewarding Israel with billions of dollars in arms transfers and political support after rejecting that ceasefire deal. Since that time, tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed and maimed and an unknown number of Israeli captives killed, either by their captors or Israeli strikes. All the while, the administration and its backers repeatedly assured voters in the U.S. that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were working tirelessly to achieve a ceasefire deal.

The fact that Trump emerged as the decisive player in pushing a potential ceasefire forward is evidence that Biden never used the full powers available to a sitting U.S. president to seal the deal in the summer. While Trump has publicly repeated his threat that he will “unleash hell” on Hamas if the Israeli hostages are not freed, his pressure has not been solely focused on Hamas; Trump and his aides have made clear to Netanyahu that the president-elect expects Israel to comply with his demands, too.

“I understand... there’s been a handshake and they are getting it finished—and maybe by the end of the week,” Trump told Newsmax Monday night.

For sure, part of Trump's motivation involves humiliating Biden and claiming victory for freeing the hostages. “I think what Trump is trying to do is to clean house and to start a new slate. And I'm sure that he has a lot of ideas about how he's going to reward Israel and Netanyahu once this is done,” said Sami Al-Arian, a prominent Palestinian analyst and the Director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University. “You can never trust what Netanyahu says or does, but I think the new factor here really is that the new Trump administration does not want this headache,” which could “distract” from higher priorities on Trump’s agenda.

For weeks, Trump’s new Middle East special envoy, real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff, has participated directly in the negotiations. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that last weekend, Witkoff forced Netanyahu to meet with him on Shabbat despite objections from the prime minister’s aides. “Witkoff's blunt reaction took them by surprise. He explained to them in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him. His message was loud and clear,” according to the report. “Witkoff has forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over the past half year.”

The Proposed Ceasefire Deal

According to a leaked draft of the three-phase agreement framework, Hamas will release 33 Israelis held in Gaza—some alive and some deceased. These would be women, children under the age of 19 years, elderly people, and injured or sick civilians. In turn, Israel would release 30 Palestinian children or minors or women. For the five female Israeli soldiers being held, the text says, 50 Palestinian prisoners would be freed. The exchange would begin with the release of three Israelis and then continue in small groups over the course of seven weeks. Among the Palestinians to be freed would be 47 people who were re-arrested by Israel following a prisoner exchange in 2011. Israel would also release all women and children it has detained since October 7, 2023. During this period, there would be a “temporary cessation of military operations by both sides.”

Throughout this first phase of the potential ceasefire, Israeli military forces would gradually withdraw from various positions in Gaza and forcibly displaced Palestinians would be permitted to return to their neighborhoods and, if still standing, their homes. “From the first day, significant amounts of humanitarian aid, relief supplies, and fuel will enter Gaza (600 trucks daily, including fuel trucks). This includes fuel for electricity generation, trade, rubble removal, and operating hospitals, clinics, and bakeries,” the draft states.

After 42 days, a second phase would begin, with the release of Israeli soldiers held in Gaza in exchange for more Palestinian captives, including hundreds of political prisoners—some of whom are serving life sentences in Israeli prisons. It is during this period that, the draft agreement states, “A permanent ceasefire will take effect before further prisoner exchanges” and “Israeli forces will fully withdraw from Gaza.”

The final phase, seven weeks later, calls for a “comprehensive reconstruction plan” overseen by Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations. During this period, the bodies of deceased captives would be exchanged.

Over the summer, Netanyahu quashed a deal that President Joe Biden had hailed as a “decisive” breakthrough. On July 2, Hamas officially informed mediators it had agreed to a U.S.-amended draft that included last-minute changes from Israel. But the U.S. joined Israel in falsely accusing Hamas of rejecting the deal. Netanyahu then intensified Israel’s attacks in Gaza, repeatedly added new terms to the framework, and assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader and lead negotiator, in Tehran. Among the new demands put forward by Netanyahu were the rights to continue occupying the Philadelphi corridor along the border with Egypt, to maintain control of the Rafah border crossing, and to keep Israeli troops in central Gaza along the Netzarim axis. There, IDF forces would have established checkpoints to search Palestinians seeking to return to their homes in northern Gaza.

The current draft of the agreement calls for a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and does not demand the dismantling of Hamas or its exclusion from Palestinian politics. Nor does it permit the open-ended presence of Israeli occupation forces in Gaza. Netanyahu had proclaimed he was fighting an “existential war” that would not cease until “total victory” was achieved. On paper, this deal represents a major rebuke of some of Netanyahu’s stated goals.

“Netanyahu, by not having his total victory, has been defeated, which by extension means that the resistance, because of its steadfastness, and until the last moment, it's been in a war of attrition,” said Al-Arian. The Qassam Brigades and the Al Quds Force, the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have “been able to inflict major tactical defeats, in terms of the soldiers, in terms of the plans of trying to have an occupation without cost. [Netanyahu] hasn't been able to have them defeated or surrender. That's not happening, which means that Israel cannot claim a total victory, as Netanyahu has been promising.”

A Mixed Victory for Netanyahu

As news of the details of the current framework have leaked out, Israeli politicians and pundits who have advocated for a total war of annihilation against the Palestinians of Gaza have gone apoplectic. Some have characterized the deal as a total capitulation to Hamas and several have expressed anger that Trump appears to have forced Israel to make massive concessions that Biden had permitted Israel to reject. “We're the first to pay a price for Trump's election. [The deal] is being forced upon us,” said Erel Segal, a right-wing pundit, on Israel’s Channel 14. “We thought we'd take control of northern Gaza, that they'd let us impede humanitarian aid… if a million Gazans return to the north, we will not [be able to] return to remove them from these areas.”

Israel’s far-right interior minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called on his fellow cabinet member and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich to join him in threatening to quit the government if Netanyahu moves forward with the deal. "We succeeded in the past year through our political power in preventing this deal from going through," Ben-Gvir said. "Since then, however, additional parties have joined the government which are supporting the deal, and we are no longer the decisive factor.” Smotrich called the potential deal a “catastrophe,” posting on X: “This is the time to continue with all our might, to occupy and cleanse the entire Strip, to finally take control of humanitarian aid from Hamas and open the gates of hell on Gaza until Hamas surrenders completely and all the hostages are returned.”

In advance of the signing of an agreement, according to Israeli media reports, Netanyahu would need approval from his security cabinet but not a full vote in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Israel’s YNet reported that Netanyahu has enough support to make the deal. Among the technical issues still being discussed among mediators Tuesday was the exact positioning of Israeli forces in a new buffer zone inside Gaza. Netanyahu and his aides have emphasized this element in their campaign to sell the deal domestically, by implying that they could resume the war at any moment with forces remaining in strike position until all hostages, dead and alive, are returned to Israel.

Despite the waves the deal is making in Israel, Netanyahu will almost certainly claim it as a victory in his larger agenda in the Middle East extending from Gaza to Lebanon to Syria and Iran. Many of Netanyahu’s major achievements occurred after he rejected the Biden deal last summer—the killing of Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, as well as the wiping out of the upper echelons of Hezbollah in Lebanon, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah. Netanyahu has also taken credit for enabling regime change in Syria and degrading Iran’s regional influence. Trump and his advisors have not revealed any details on what they may have offered Netanyahu in return for his acquiescence to the Gaza deal. Trump has portrayed himself as the most pro-Israel president in history and has stacked his incoming administration with unbridled pro-Israel nominees, some of whom have said there is no such thing as a Palestinian or the West Bank.

In his first term, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner touted the Abraham Accords, a major push toward normalization with Saudi Arabia, and a return of that effort would have far-reaching implications not just for the Palestinian cause, but also for the power balance in the Middle East. Trump and Netanyahu share a desire to see regime change in Iran or, at a minimum, to target its nuclear facilities and capabilities. Israel could annex more Palestinian territory and further expand illegal settlements in the West Bank, as well as more land in the occupied Syrian Golan heights, which Trump officially declared Israeli territory during his first term in office. And there is the possibility that Trump will permit Netanyahu to resume the war in Gaza.

“Trump is very ardent and very Zionist and very supportive of the Israeli enterprise, the Israeli project. But I think he wants to help them in different ways rather than achieve what they call total victory over something that he could see it's not attainable in the near future,” said Al-Arian. “Netanyahu could go back to his old tricks and again he could make up some excuses to resume his war so that he can stay more in power and basically shuffle the deck again, hoping that Trump would be exhausted and let him do what he wants.”

Al-Arian also believes that if the Gaza war remains stalled, Netanyahu will intensify his focus on the West Bank. Since the October 7, 2023 attacks, Israel has waged a smaller scale war in the West Bank, engaging in limited ground invasions and mass arrests. “There will possibly be an end to the Gaza war, but there will be now another war in the West Bank,” Al-Arian said. “It may not be on the same scale, but it would be as vicious from the settlers, from the Netanyahu government.”