“Is that a joke?”
US President Joe Biden responded curtly on Wednesday to a journalist who asked whether he or Trump deserved more credit for securing a Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
But President-elect Donald Trump took a different view.
“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November,” he wrote on his social network Truth Social, celebrating victory even before the White House had announced the conclusion of the talks.
The agreement, which was approved by Israel’s security cabinet on Friday, should be the first step to ending the bloody war that has been raging since Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.
Reagan and Carter 2.0?
The ceasefire deal comes at an unusual time in US politics, as the Biden administration prepares to cede power to Trump. But such a last-minute deal is not without precedent.
In 1981, outgoing president Jimmy Carter was still struggling to secure the release of American diplomats held hostage in Iran as Ronald Reagan prepared to take the reins. At the time, Reagan was suspected of sabotaging the Carter administration’s behind-the-scenes negotiations to be able to claim credit for the hostage release at the start of his term.
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For Gaza, negotiators sent by both Biden and Trump worked together to demonstrate the continuity of US commitment to the region.
Considering the highly polarised nature of current US politics, it was an unusual move, according to René Lindstädt, an expert in US politics at the University of Birmingham.
“The fact that the incoming team and the Biden administration did work together gives you a pretty good idea that this was a win-win for both sides,” he said.
Savvy negotiating or just good timing?
Trump has repeatedly called for Israeli hostages to be freed before his return to the Oval Office on January 20.
Some note that the involvement of Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in the negotiations was key.
Before Witkoff’s trip to the region, “the only party which was not agreeing to the ceasefire was Binyamin Netanyahu”, said Anurag Mishra, US political analyst at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) Verona, adding that Witkoff was the instigator of meetings with Netanyahu in which the Israeli prime minister ultimately agreed to the ceasefire.
“It really looks like a deal which has been done by Trump administration,” he said.
Moreover, relations between Netanyahu and Biden have been notoriously rocky, and the hardline Israeli prime minister has made no secret of his support for Trump.
Indeed, Trump was the first person that Netanyahu called to thank for his part in the agreement. The Israeli prime minister named Trump at the beginning of an official statement while President Biden was not mentioned until the fourth paragraph, according to the New York Times.
“It was only because of the promise of Donald Trump coming to the White House and his special envoy being involved in this case, that this ceasefire happened,” said Shahin Modarres, an international security analyst at ITSS.
Modarres said Trump was hoping for an early ceasefire deal before he takes office so that his administration “can devote its focus to Iran”.
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“Trump didn’t want to come in and immediately have to deal with this issue,” Lindstädt agreed, citing the president-elect’s desire to begin the mass deportation of immigrants and getting his controversial cabinet approved, among other pressing priorities.
Not everybody agrees that Trump was such a key player in the deal’s success.
Biden and his administration have noted that the agreement is essentially the same three-phase ceasefire deal they have been trying to get both sides to agree to since May. Recent events, they argue, just made it possible to nudge it over the finish line.
According to Lindstädt, the “Biden administration knew that Netanyahu wanted to get back into the good graces of Trump, and having [Witkoff] present would probably make Netanyahu be a little bit more cooperative”.
While Trump’s involvement was “very helpful to get the agreement over the line”, giving Trump too much credit is a mistake and ignores other factors that influenced Netanyahu’s decision and the work done by the Biden administration, said Amnon Aran, a specialist in the Israeli-Palestine conflict at City University of London.
Lindstädt agreed, noting the similarities with a deal that has been in the works for months.
“Let’s not forget the text agreed upon is very similar to the one the Biden administration has been working on,” he said.
Convincing the Israeli prime minister to come to the table may have been easier than ever, given recent events across the region.
“The significant hit Hezbollah sustained over the summer followed by the fall of the Assad regime [in Syria] and also the limited, but nevertheless effective, Israeli attacks on Iran put Netanyahu in a better strategic position and gave him more internal legitimacy,” said Aran.
“I think this context is more relevant than Donald Trump and his envoy’s work.”
Aran added that much of this “would never have happened unless the Biden administration … provided the security envelope that it did”.
“This is all the work of Joe Biden,” he said.
“Biden has to be significantly credited for it … this is still very much a Biden achievement, to my mind, more than a Trump achievement,” he added.
Just a starting point
For Lindstädt, the question of which president should enjoy more credit for achieving the deal is beside the point.
The debate around the signing of the deal, which he describes as a “PR stunt from both sides”, should not distract from the difficulties that will ensue.
“We’ll see what kind of stance the Trump administration will adopt for the negotiation … that will show whether or not this deal can last,” he said.
While Mishra believes Trump “really wants a lasting peace in this part of the region” so he can turn his focus to other priorities such as Iran, he warns that the danger is that Trump will put the Israeli-Palestinian issue aside prematurely.
That would be a risky move to make with a fledgling peace accord in such a highly volatile region.
This article has been translated from the original in French by Anna Hartley.
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