I salute President Donald Trump for his determined leadership in stopping the war in Gaza and bringing home the remaining 20 hostages. His victory lap around the Middle East and enthusiastic reception in Israel were well deserved.
He was able to do what former president Joe Biden could not do earlier with a similar ceasefire plan. He brought to the task a force of personality, uncharacteristic flexibility and skill, determination to burnish his peacemaker credentials, a unified party not riddled with competing views on Israel, and the ability to bully Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into defying his extremist collation partners and abandoning his demands for total victory.
Despite those undeniable achievements, history suggests this may be no more than another ceasefire in a seemingly endless war in which both sides have worked fervently against any genuine peace agreement.
Trump's complications
The adulation that greeted Trump in Israel last week is unlikely to be matched by an American Jewish community that welcomes his peacemaking but fears the extremist and antisemitic fires he has stoked at home, and his accelerating attacks against the pillars of American democracy.
The president had additional leverage. Under Netanyahu’s leadership, America had gone from being Israel’s best friend to being virtually its only friend. As Trump told the Knesset, Bibi is “not the easiest guy to deal with.”
A convicted felon, Trump must have felt some empathy for Netanyahu when he ad-libbed an appeal to President Isaac Herzog to pardon the prime minister, the first ever indicted while in office, and who is currently on trial for corruption.
Israelis took to their streets to celebrate the hostages’ freedom, and Hamas took to theirs to violently settle old scores. Trump declared “the war is over” and told the Knesset, which knew better, that the “Holy Land… is finally at peace.”
It really isn’t. That’s just Trumpspeak. This is another ceasefire, and the chances of its survival, much less success, remain fragile. Experience has taught Trump to worry that Bibi may seek a way to squirm out of it, as he did in March.
In his rambling and self-adulatory speech to the Knesset, Trump falsely and malevolently accused his predecessors, Biden and former president Barack Obama, of harboring “hatred of Israel.” He also boasted about how “I rebuilt the military” to be “the strongest and greatest… in the history of the world.”
A diplomatic disaster for Israel
Hamas started the war in the hope of reshaping the Middle East, and it did, just not in the way it intended. Its immediate goals were to block normalization of Israeli-Saudi relations, focus attention on the Palestinian issue, and draw in its Hezbollah and Iranian allies.
The war certainly did focus world attention on the Palestinian cause. Some recent polls show greater sympathy among Americans for the Palestinian cause than for Israel.
The attack did set back Israel-Saudi normalization, as Hamas intended, but only temporarily. Newly leaked documents revealed that before the war, and throughout it, American, Israeli, and Arab military officials, including the Saudis, have been secretly working together at a US air base in Qatar on security cooperation, despite public Arab denunciations of Israel’s conduct of the war.
Eight Arab states were involved, six officially: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates; and two unofficially: Kuwait and Oman. The Trump administration expects to enlist those who aren’t already members to join the Abraham Accords, the president’s major first-term foreign policy achievement.
This war has been a great military victory and diplomatic disaster for Israel.
Hezbollah in Lebanon was decapitated and weakened, president Bashar Assad was forced to flee Syria and was replaced by a new regime that wants a peaceful relationship with Israel, and Israel dealt a dramatic blow to Iran’s influence and nuclear ambitions, with a little help from a friend. Israel emerged as the region’s dominant military power.
The possibility of peace
A potential peace dividend may come if Netanyahu’s coalition partners, who demanded nothing short of total victory, decide to bring down the country’s most extremist government and force new elections. That would give Israelis a chance to choose new leaders who could repair and redefine badly tattered relations with US voters, American Jewry, the Democratic Party, a growing number of Republicans, and the MAGA isolationist wing.
Israel can no longer rely on the Diaspora for political and financial support, yet expect it to keep silent. American Jews, especially younger ones, are less inclined than older generations to reflexively support the Israeli government. The relationship is changing, and Congress also will be rewriting it. Political and financial support will come at a higher price.
Trump says this may be his greatest deal ever, although it is unlikely to match his hype and bring “a great, glorious, and lasting peace that will change history and be remembered forever.”
The “main driver” in this deal was Trump’s “unusual display” of “presidential pressure” on Netanyahu, said Aaron David Miller, a veteran of decades of Mideast peace talks. To make it work and secure the place in history he feels he deserves, Trump, “whose attention span is short and unfocused,” will have to remain personally involved in the “enormously complicated negotiations” that lie ahead, Miller cautioned.
That will require a major transformation. Trump appears to have abandoned his plan to move the locals out of Gaza and build a luxury riviera, if that was ever a serious thought.
Personal diplomacy and presidential pressure made shepherding the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release possible. The heavy lifting begins now.
It is a commendable achievement whose success will rely on the president remaining engaged to make sure it lives up to his promises. I hope his success in pressuring Netanyahu to do the right thing will give him the courage he needs to finally stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring the Ukraine war to an end.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.