Netanyahu Isn't Getting the Credit He Deserves for the Ceasefire

And Trump deserves credit too, but not for brokering the ceasefire.

I published a short piece for The Spectator earlier: Who deserves credit for the Gaza ceasefire? But here’s a longer version of my thoughts.

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Two distinct narratives are going around about the Gaza ceasefire. The mainstream one gives President Donald Trump the lion’s share of credit. The second one, mostly pushed by former Joe Biden partisans, is trying to share the glory. Both are wrong and for the same reason: They give the United States unrealistic credit and ignore the obvious fact that it is the belligerents who decide the fate of a war. More than any world leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserves credit.

After the return of the living hostages, Antony Blinken, who served as the secretary of state during the previous administration, posted on X to explain the ceasefire’s emergence. He cited the January ceasefire that the lame-duck Biden administration reached, but that “That moment was squandered.” He did not ascribe any blame for the squandering, instead opting to share the success: “It’s good that President Trump adopted and built on the plan the Biden Administration developed after months of discussion with Arab partners, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”

Blinken is correct that the two plans are similar, but devising and implementing them could not be more different. The Biden administration had an uneasy relationship with Israel. This led to Israeli distrust of any American proposal on the one hand and Hamas’s hopes that, by exploiting the tensions, it could get more favorable terms or even a unilateral Israeli withdrawal.

Much more meaningful, at least for the time being, is that those similarities are in the later parts of the ceasefire agreement. But the early stages, specifically regarding the release of the hostages, were different. Hamas agreed to release the living hostages drip by drip. In February, negotiations over extending the ceasefire in exchange for releasing all hostages began. That month, Biden’s envoy for the negotiations, Brett McGurk, wrote that Hamas was “playing games” with hostages, as it had during the 2023 ceasefire. He went on to endorse the U.S. and Israeli plan to add pressure on Hamas. By March, it became obvious that Hamas intended to keep some of those hostages. Under these circumstances, Israel resumed the war. The Biden ceasefire collapsed because its initial stage was unacceptable. It does not matter that the later parts of the plan were brilliant if there was never a hope of getting to them. As the Persian proverb goes, if the mason plants the first brick crookedly, the wall will reach the stars crookedly.

That was the Biden plan. The Trump plan is that, the Trump plan, mostly in name. Israeli journalist Amit Segal says, “Every Trump plan [for] the Middle East is a plan written by Ron Dermer (senior adviser to Netanyahu) and just wrapped in this shining bright gift package to President Trump.” He adds that the Israeli administration believes that “the second Israel would introduce a plan for the future of Gaza or the Middle East, it would be the exact moment in which it would die because no one would take an Israeli plan. But if it’s shipped to Washington and then sold as a Made in USA product, then it has a chance.” Avi Shavit further reports that Dermer, former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair, and Emirati president Mohamed bin Zayed had been working on this plan since December 2023.

The genius of the Trump plan is not that it is modeled after the Biden plan, but that it was conceived in Jerusalem and only amended and presented by Washington.