There’s little doubt Donald Trump’s intervention was the main reason for the Gaza ceasefire but predictably Joe Biden, who facilitated genocide until the bitter end, is saying it was him on his way out the door, says Joe Lauria.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. President Donald Trump, January, 2020, in D.C. (White House, D.Myles Cullen)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Shortly after the ceasefire in Gaza was announced on Wednesday, President Joe Biden issued a statement taking credit for the deal, never mentioning who is really responsible for it. Biden said:
“I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31, 2024, after which it was endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council. It is the result not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran — but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy. My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done.”
In an eight-minute address Wednesday night from the White House, Biden again never mentioned Trump, giving all the credit to himself and his team. When a reporter asked him who the history books would credit, Biden replied, “Is that a joke?”
“This plan was developed and negotiated by my team and will be largely implemented by the incoming administration. That’s why I told my team to keep the incoming administration fully informed,” Biden said.
Actually, it wasn’t Biden’s ceasefire plan at all, according to Israel journalist Ben Caspit:
“In fact, the deal being finalized now could have been achieved last May, and was actually formulated by Netanyahu. It was Biden who unveiled Netanyahu’s plan at the time. … ‘Trump forced Netanyahu to finally accept Netanyahu’s plan,’ an Israeli diplomatic source familiar with the events told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.”
Biden at no time seriously sought any ceasefire. Instead he unceasingly facilitated Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a 15-month crime spree, punctuated by pro forma attempts at “ceasefires,” which Biden allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage every time.
Biden’s “attempts” at “ceasefires” were actually electoral stunts to try to con voters, who were opposed to his genocidal policy, into thinking he was really concerned about thousands of innocent lives being systematically snuffed out with American bombs.
He was also trying to make Americans believe he was earnestly attempting to stop the daily massacres. But a majority of voters knew all along that he, and his replacement Kamala Harris, had no intentions whatsoever of forcing a ceasefire.
Biden had all the leverage over Netanyahu. But instead of using it to force him to accept a hostage exchange at anytime over 15 months to stop the killing, he instead pushed the lie that Israel was merely defending itself.
This war was never about the hostages, defeating Hamas or defending Israel. It was about ethnically cleansing Gaza in a genocide to further the 1948 project to establish Greater Israel on all of historic Palestine, and the Biden administration was on board with it.
If Biden had really wanted a ceasefire, like the one he’s now trying to take credit for, all he had to do was telephone Netanyahu and tell him no more guns, no more ammo, no more diplomatic cover and Israel would have been forced to cease its fire.
But Biden never did that.
In his dwindling days in office he fraudulently wants to be remembered as a peacemaker and a statesman, just like he waited until the very end in another stunt to take Cuba off the terrorism list but never restored relations with Havana the way Barack Obama did.
That Trump is the one instead who forced Israel to accept this ceasefire is beyond doubt, based on credible sources.
Trump ‘Surprises’ Israel
Netanyahu putting a smile on a tough meeting at his office on the Sabbath with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff. (Office of the Prime Minister.)
It is worth quoting at length from the Israeli daily Haaretz, which makes it abundantly clear:
“We need to look reality in the eye. Intellectual integrity is called for. The coming return of the hostages and the end to the fighting are the work of Donald Trump. As the American saying goes: It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.
And it was Trump, in his inimitable style. End the fucking war, he ordered Netanyahu end this fucking war. Before he even came into office! Nothing remains of all the drivel about the Phliadelphi route, the Netzarim corridor, ending Hamas’ rule, permanent settlement in Gaza or ‘the generals’ plan.’
So many words and chatter have been squandered on the arrogant, self-centered Israeli discourse. By the time the inauguration ceremony was approaching, it took just a few general yet explicit threats and one special envoy who did not study political science at Princeton but came from the business world.
Chaim Levinson reported that when Netanyahu asked him [Trump’s Middle East envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff] to delay their meetings until after Shabbat, he responded in highly undiplomatic language. The meeting took place as scheduled; the deal moved forward.
At last, the Americans are arriving to explain to their protectorate who’s boss. Who makes the jets and the interceptors, who sells the bombs and who signs the checks for defense aid. It’s unfair and unpleasant, almost heartbreaking, considering who the client is. But you can’t look the other way. This is happening with mean, crude Trump. It did not happen with the good, kind and generous Joe Biden.
Recall, if you will, Secretary of State Antony Blinken‘s endless shuttle trips. How they ran rings around him in Israel. So many dismissals, maneuvers and scams. This very same deal could have been achieved last May, saving the lives of over 100 soldiers killed in Gaza and who knows how many hostages.
It would also have ended the war in the north earlier, with all its casualties and damages. What a terrible crime against Israeliness and the Israelis has been committed by the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir government, courtesy of an empathetic and impotent American administration.”
The Times of Israel reported that “two Arab officials” said Witkoff did “more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year.”
Biden and Netanyahu in Israel, 2016. (U.S. Embassy Jerusalem/Flickr)
The Israeli journalist Caspit wrote:
“Netanyahu appears to have overestimated Trump’s support. According to Haaretz, Trump gave Netanyahu an ultimatum via Witkoff: Either close the deal with Hamas or be held equally responsible and bear the consequences. According to Haaretz, Witkoff did not make direct threats, but the ultimatum was clear: Netanyahu must agree to a deal or Trump would not back him. […]. Diplomatic sources told Al-Monitor that Witkoff’s bluntness in his conversation with Netanyahu apparently frightened him. […]
Netanyahu, who knows that Trump does not play by the rules, folded. Gone were all his arguments about the threat such a deal posed to Israel, including those of allowing Palestinian residents to return to their homes in northern Gaza after Israel expelled them and of pulling out from the Gaza-Egypt border. Gone was his demand for a wide buffer zone. […]
Trump is not having any of it. ‘Trump will not tolerate another front. He made it clear to Netanyahu that he wants to enter the White House with a clean slate in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon,’ the Israeli diplomatic source noted. Netanyahu’s tactic of playing the blame game with Hamas has been squashed.”
Even the pro-Biden New York Times sort of admits it. “Mr. Trump had threatened severe consequences unless Israel and Hamas reached an agreement before his Jan. 20 inauguration, which some officials credited with helping to advance the negotiations,” it wrote.
Journalist Jeremy Scahill, said in Drop Site News:
“Donald Trump’s decisive role in pushing forward the … ceasefire is evidence that Joe Biden refused to use his full powers as president. … Biden allowed Netanyahu to steamroll him for months—rewarding Israel with billions of dollars in arms transfers and political support after rejecting [Biden’s] ceasefire deal.”
Israeli Extremists Furious
Ben-Givr. (Shay Kendler/Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons)
The fanatics in the Netanyahu cabinet who have not yet completed their task of killing or driving enough Palestinians out of Gaza to make the Strip part of Greater Israel are incensed with Trump.
They were assuming like many people, including this writer, that Trump would enthusiastically embrace their diabolical designs with perhaps even more fervor than Biden. They were not expecting this kind of pressure from Trump. They feel betrayed by him.
The two most extreme of them threatened to pull their parties out of Netanyahu’s coalition government, which would force it to collapse. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir “called on his archrival [Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich to join him in toppling the government if the deal goes through,” Haaretz reported. The paper said:
“Ben-Gvir, in typical fashion, doesn’t miss an opportunity to put his clownish demeanor mixed with his standard negligence on public display. On Tuesday, he posted a video on X, where he credited himself with stopping previous hostage deals. That embarrassed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has claimed for months that no viable deal had yet to be put on the table, solely due to the stubbornness of cruel Hamas.”
Smotrich reportedly is hoping that he can at least get the annexation of the West Bank in exchange for the Gaza deal. But Haaretz reports:
“… sources within the incoming U.S. administration are consistently signaling that President-elect Trump is heading in an entirely different direction: towards a potential Saudi normalization deal in which Palestinians would receive some form of diplomatic payoff – the complete opposite of the annexation that the Israeli far right believed was in its pocket.
Soon enough, the far right that backed Trump to the hilt will realize that the incoming president has achieved everything the Democratic administration couldn’t force Netanyahu to do, even before Trump sets foot in the White House again.”
All that killing in Gaza for nothing, the extremists will lament.
Still Up to Trump
Destruction in Gaza, 2023. (Fars Media Corporation, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
So now it will be up to Trump to see that this ceasefire succeeds. It is to begin Sunday, the day before he is inaugurated. It is to last at least 42 days and the hostages on both sides are to be released in stages.
Israeli forces are to withdraw eastward away from the Gazan population that it has been slaughtering. The Israeli cabinet is expected to vote on the deal on Thursday.
But even if it approves the ceasefire, will Israel find a way to get out of it? Perhaps get their hostages back and then find some pretext to resume the ethnic cleansing of Gaza? After all, that’s what the war is for, not the hostages.
According to Chris Hedges, a former New York Times Middle East bureau chief, Israel, of course is not to be trusted. He tweeted on Wednesday:
“Israel, going back decades, has played the same duplicitous game. It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants—in this case the release of the hostages—but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace.
Hamas is seeking a permanent ceasefire. But Israel says it retains the right to re-engage militarily. There is no agreement about who will govern Gaza. Israel has made it clear that the continuance of Hamas in power is unacceptable. There is no mention of the status of UNWRA, the U.N. agency that Israel has outlawed and that provides the bulk of the humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, most of whom have been displaced. There is no agreement on the reconstruction of Gaza, much of which lies in rubble. And of course, there is no route to an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.”
It will be up to Trump. Can he keep the pressure on to preserve the deal?
Netanyahu knows Trump does not play by the rules. This is Trump’s last term so he won’t need campaign financing again. He may be more of a wild card than ever. He’s clearly unpredictable and can only be cautiously assessed. This time he seems to have done the right thing. Time will tell if he continues to use the tremendous U.S. leverage against Netanyahu, the leverage Biden refused to use.
Lots of people might not take Donald Trump, the private citizen, seriously. But when he suddenly commands the most powerful military force in history in a country that is still an economic powerhouse people tend to listen.
And that even includes a wanted war criminal and master manipulator like Benjamin Netanyahu, who had gotten used to walking all over the likes of Joe Biden and Antony Blinken. They leave office on Monday.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former 25-year U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
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