WHITE HOUSE —
Israel’s Cabinet approved a deal for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release, with 24 ministers voting in favor and eight ministers rejecting the agreement. The deal is scheduled to be implemented beginning Sunday.
The deal to end the fighting between Israel and Hamas was achieved after more than a year of negotiations, with mediation from the United States, Qatar and Egypt. President Joe Biden first endorsed the deal in May. The warring parties agreed to it on Wednesday, and it was subsequently approved by the Israeli Cabinet early Saturday in Israel.
Starting midday on Monday when President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated, it will be up to his administration to see that the deal is enforced.
The agreement has three phases, each of which will last six weeks. The terms of phases two and three are still being negotiated, but under phase one the cessation of hostilities is expected to continue if six weeks pass before the next phase is finalized.
Phase one includes withdrawal of Israeli forces from densely populated areas and more aid for Gaza, as well as the release of some Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons and some hostages held by Hamas, including Americans. The U.S. and other Western countries have designated Hamas as a terrorist group.
The release of American hostages is a “fundamental component” of Trump’s interest in ending the war swiftly, according to Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.
Whether Trump will sustain pressure for the deal to proceed to phase two, when all of the hostages are set to be released, and to phase three, when reconstruction of Gaza will begin, remains to be seen, Alkhatib told VOA.
Alkhatib expressed concern that after the first phase Trump will be “so disinterested” in Gaza that the agreement will amount to “little more than a freezing of the conflict.” This would be disastrous for Palestinians in Gaza and the goal of Palestinian statehood, he added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Friday that he had received “unequivocal guarantees” from both Biden and Trump that if negotiations on phase two fail, Israel “will return to intense fighting with the backing of the United States.”
Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and captured about 250 hostages in their Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the current war. Israel says Hamas is still holding 101 hostages, including 35 the military says are dead.
Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Two-state solution
The Biden administration’s goal has been Palestinian statehood under the two-state solution. This could pave the way to bringing Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords — the 2020 deal brokered under the first Trump administration that normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Biden had sought to expand the accords to include Saudi Arabia, which maintains it will not consider normalizing relations until Israel commits to a “credible path” to a Palestinian state. Washington and Riyadh had been exploring the expansion through a package that would include, among other offers, American security guarantees for the Saudis. Those efforts stalled after the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught.
Now Trump appears to be aiming to use the momentum of the Gaza ceasefire to add Saudi Arabia into the accords.
“We will continue promoting PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH throughout the region, as we build upon the momentum of this ceasefire to further expand the Historic Abraham Accords,” Trump posted on social media Wednesday following the announcement that a ceasefire deal has been reached.
Saudi Arabia has never formally recognized Israel since its creation in 1948. As a de facto leader of the Arab and Islamic world, Riyadh’s recognition would represent a breakthrough for the Jewish state.
Trump’s main objective now is to ensure that whatever happens in Gaza does not prevent him from securing that deal, while Israel’s goal is to ensure whatever happens in Gaza doesn’t prevent cooperation with the U.S. over Iran, said Jonathan Rynhold, head of the department of political studies at Bar Ilan University.
“So, I’m not sure that it makes sense to think beyond the first phase at this point,” Rynhold told VOA.
Trump and Israel will “work out their positions on Gaza precisely against the shadow of those two things,” he added.
Trump’s role in securing the deal
In the same social media post Wednesday, Trump took credit for his role in securing the ceasefire.
“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” Trump wrote.
For months the Biden administration has progressively included Trump’s team in peace talks, beginning with an Oval Office meeting a week after Trump won the election. At that Nov. 13 meeting, Biden proposed that they work together to push the deal through.
“We’ve sent a signal to the incoming team that we’re prepared to work with them on this issue,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that day.
Shortly after, Sullivan and Biden’s top Middle East adviser, Brett McGurk, began coordinating with their successors on the Trump team, Mike Waltz and Steve Witkoff, said a senior administration official who spoke with reporters on background Wednesday.
The Biden official said that in the final days leading up to the ceasefire, Witkoff worked in tandem with McGurk in an “almost unprecedented,” cross-administration partnership that was “highly constructive, very fruitful.” But he declined to elaborate on Witkoff’s and Trump’s role in securing the deal, other than saying that the presidential transition provided a “natural” deadline for a diplomatic breakthrough.
Pressure on Israel
Critics have accused Biden of failing to use U.S. military support as leverage over Netanyahu to reach a deal or moderate Israel’s campaign that has taken tens of thousands of Palestinian lives.
Publicly, Biden officials have largely echoed Israel in faulting Hamas for the failure of the talks. But some Israeli security officials and many observers also blame Netanyahu for blocking progress, including by repeatedly introducing fresh demands in negotiations.
With Trump’s victory, Netanyahu’s calculations may have changed, said Laura Blumenfeld, senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.
“Trump injected a kind of fear factor into this process that was missing before,” she told VOA. “He can’t triangulate anymore the way he would play Biden off of the Republican Congress. There’s nowhere for Netanyahu to run, nowhere to hide, and so he took this deal he couldn’t refuse.”
Trump’s pressure may have also created space for Netanyahu to resist ultimatums from far-right allies who had threatened to leave his governing coalition if a ceasefire deal is made, which would mean an end to the prime minister’s term.
Eight Israeli far-right politicians, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, rejected the deal but it is still unclear whether they will leave the coalition.
“Netanyahu finally called their bluff,” Blumenfeld said. “Or maybe actually, Trump called Netanyahu’s bluff, because he was using these right-wing Cabinet members all along as an excuse not to make the concessions that he didn’t want to make.”
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