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Analysis
Biden or
Trump – who should claim credit for the Gaza ceasefire deal?
Andrew Roth
Global
affairs correspondent
Joe Biden
said his team negotiated the deal, but Donald Trump said it was agreed only
because he is the incoming US president
Thu 16 Jan
2025 06.32 GMT
The question
yelled at Joe Biden by a reporter was unapologetically blunt: “Who do you think
deserves credit for this Mr. President: you or [Donald] Trump?”
Biden had
just finished announcing what he presented as his signature foreign policy
achievement – a ceasefire-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas to halt
the bloody war in Gaza that has left 46,000 Palestinians and 1,700 Israelis
dead. He wasn’t in the mood for that debate.
“Is that a
joke?” the president asked and then walked away flanked by vice-president
Kamala Harris and secretary of state Antony Blinken.
Success has
many fathers. When the ceasefire in Gaza was finally announced on Thursday,
they all stood up to take the credit.
Biden in a
press conference said that the ceasefire was “developed and negotiated by my
team and will be largely implemented by the incoming administration.” As he
praised his diplomats, he grew wistful: “The Bible says blessed are the
peacemakers. Many peacemakers helped make this deal happen.”
But there
was little public soul-searching about why the plan he had proposed in May –
the “exact” same plan as Biden reminded reporters – was finally accepted only
days before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
That fact
did not escape the attention of president-elect Trump. “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,” he said in a post on Truth Social, a social media network.
The truth
may lie somewhere in the middle. According to a senior Biden administration
official, Trump and Biden’s teams forged an unlikely partnership to secure the
complex ceasefire during a transition marked by animosity and distrust.
As the deal
was announced on Wednesday, there were even notes of bonhomie between the rival
teams, with Biden administration officials praising the partnership between
diplomat Brett McGurk and Trump’s envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff.
“It was
really quite remarkable,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
Biden had
told Trump he wanted to work together to secure a deal when the two met in the
Oval Office shortly after Trump’s surprise victory in the November elections,
according to the official.
In the final
days of the negotiation this month, Witkoff, who does not hold any formal
position in government, was invited to travel to Doha alongside the Biden
administration officials taking part in negotiations.
In one
extraordinary moment, the official said, Witkoff was dispatched on his own to
Israel to meet with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a high-stakes gambit
to convince him to take the ceasefire deal.
The meeting
between Witkoff and Netanyahu, which took place during Shabbat over the initial
objections of Netanyahu’s aides, was described as “tense”, according to Israeli
media. Reports said that Witkoff put pressure on Netanyahu to accept a
ceasefire-for-hostages deal and agree to key concessions to halt the war
sooner.
“I thought
that was quite effective,” the Biden administration official said.
The Times of
Israel, citing its own sources, put it less charitably for the Biden camp:
“Arab officials: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden
did all year.”
In his
public statements on the deal, Netanyahu appeared to snub Biden, calling
president-elect Trump first to thank him “for his help in advancing the release
of the hostages and helping Israel to bring an end to the suffering of dozens
of hostages and their families.”
After
relaying plans to come to Washington to meet with Trump to discuss the
situation around Gaza, he added a curt line about his work with Biden: “prime
minister Netanyahu then spoke with US President Joe Biden and thanked him as
well for his assistance in advancing the hostages deal.”
Leaked
details of the meeting between Netanyahu and Witkoff may have elements of
“theater to give Netanyahu cover for finally accepting a deal,” said Matt Duss,
the executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy and a
former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders “But also, I think the
fact is that Netanyahu understands that Trump is coming into office. He’s made
clear he wants this war to end, and Trump operates according to a very
different calculus than Biden.”
“Biden has
always made clear that no matter what Netanyahu does, he will continue to have
unconditional, unstinting American support,” he said. “Netanyahu cannot be sure
of that with Trump.”
In the US,
Biden has faced attacks from both the right and left on his handling of the
war, as well as anger among officials who believed that the United States was
not putting sufficient pressure on Israel to halt its campaign in Gaza.
Dozens of
officials at the state department have bristled in public and private at the
administration’s handling of the war, arguing that Biden and his aides’ refusal
to threaten to halt deliveries of arms and other aid to Israel over the war may
have prolonged the military campaign.
A Pentagon
official previously told the Guardian that the ceasefire was “being driven by
Trump’s team … and Biden, Blinken and the whole administration secured its
legacy as enablers.”
Pro-Trump
Republicans have been equally scathing about Biden’s efforts to end the war,
although they have targeted him as too soft on Hamas.
Senator John
Cornyn of Texas on Thursday said that the deal was “encouraging but obviously
we know that President Biden has not been the best negotiator when it comes to
these deals.”
Trump had
previously warned that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if a deal
was not reached before his inauguration.
Asked
whether those threats may have led to the ceasefire, Cornyn replied: “I don’t
believe in coincidences. So I do believe that President Trump had an impact on
this deal. And obviously the Biden administration is eager to wrap this up.”
Yet the
sharpest anger against Biden over the war has been voiced by progressives, who
have said that the administration’s overwhelming support for Israel may have
both prolonged the war and cost the Harris campaign crucial votes on the left
in the November elections.
The
ceasefire had come too late, some said, and would do little to burnish Biden’s
legacy on foreign policy.
“No one’s
going to buy that Biden delivered this ceasefire. No one,” said Duss. “He
continued to give Netanyahu political cover, even as Netanyahu repeatedly
undermined the possibility of a ceasefire.”
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