I’ll admit it: Donald Trump deserves some credit for the ceasefire in Gaza. I didn’t think it would happen—I thought Israel would fully ethnically cleanse the place, and then do the same thing to the West Bank, and Trump would not care. And one should not overstate the achievement here. There were two previous ceasefires negotiated under Joe Biden, under which many more hostages were released. The war may well start up again soon, just like it did after the other ceasefires.
Indeed, as I was drafting this article, Israel was already violating the ceasefire terms by shooting several people and cutting the amount of aid let into Gaza in half, supposedly in retaliation for Hamas not producing hostage bodies fast enough. (Hamas claims it is working as fast as it can without digging equipment or electricity.)
Still, at the time of writing at least, the ceasefire hasn’t broken, and it appears likely that the rest of the hostages, or their remains, will be released soon. If that happens, a key excuse for Israel’s prolongation of the war will be gone. Though there is no sign of a permanent settlement, much less any prospect of Palestinians getting civil rights, this is the best news we’ve had in the last two years.
And it all happened because Trump got mad and leaned on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It proves beyond any doubt that President Joe Biden could have ended this conflict for good more than a year ago.
Now, Biden almost certainly would have had a much more difficult time getting Israel, and particularly Netanyahu, to play ball than Trump did. Bibi is a paid-up member of the global network of right-wing authoritarians, and has the staggering corruption scandals to prove it. As we’ve seen with Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, or Trump and Javier Milei, or Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson, or Musk and Vladimir Putin, these people instinctively work together to protect each other and advance their mutual interests. They have a vision of the future, and it’s a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
Indeed, Netanyahu is not just a friendly aspiring autocrat—he openly campaigns for Republican policies and politicians. In 2002 he told Congress there was “no question” Saddam Hussein was working on nuclear weapons; in 2012 he campaigned for Mitt Romney, and in 2015 he gave a speech to Congress attempting to derail President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu celebrated Trump’s victory in 2016—which indeed led to the nuclear deal being torn up, as well as the American embassy being moved to Jerusalem—and tried to help him in 2020 and 2024. It’s no surprise that Netanyahu would be more willing to listen to Trump than Biden.
That said, it appears that Trump did have to apply serious pressure to get this deal through. The New York Times reports that he had more or less let Netanyahu do whatever he wanted, spending weeks on his bewilderingly goofy idea that the U.S. could annex Gaza itself, until the Israeli military hit Qatar with a missile strike. This massive overreach infuriated Trump, who rounded up support from the Gulf states, hauled Netanyahu into the White House, and forced him to get on the phone and read an apology to the Qatari prime minister. (It’s not for nothing that Trump wants to maintain good relations with Qatar, the country that gifted him with a luxury jet to become the new Air Force One.)
But that is just to say Israel is a small country in a dangerous neighborhood, while America is the global hegemon providing it with vital money, weapons, and diplomatic cover. When the U.S. president chooses to apply pressure in such a situation, it tends to work. Trump didn’t have to do much, but he also barely touched the levers of diplomatic pressure available to him. And while Biden would have had to push hard, he should have assumed from the start of his presidency that Netanyahu would do all he could to undermine his policy and get him replaced with a Republican, because that’s what Netanyahu does to every Democrat.
When the U.S. president chooses to apply pressure in such a situation, it tends to work.
Biden didn’t do that. He, and the rest of his administration, carried out a criminally stupid “bear hug” strategy of enabling Netanyahu at every turn. When USAID and the State Department’s refugees bureau concluded that Israel was deliberately restricting food and water from entering Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken buried the report and lied to Congress about what he knew, so weapons sales to Israel could continue—and in any case, it wasn’t some great mystery, as it was obvious people were starving. Even when Biden himself set a red line in public, saying Rafah should not be invaded, and the IDF proceeded to do just that, the only consequence was temporarily pausing the delivery of 2,000-pound MK-84 bombs that were totally useless except for maximizing civilian casualties and which Israel had already received in huge numbers in any case.
To anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of Israel-Palestine, it was obvious that the Israeli reaction to the October 7 attacks would be murderous collective punishment. Within a week, this was an undeniable fact. Biden would have been entirely justified in applying heavy and intensifying pressure to end the conflict by that point. Likely all that would have been necessary is credibly threatening to cut off supplies of weapons, which, in fact, is required by American law. (That’s why Blinken lied.)
It’s impossible to say with any certainty what Biden’s calamitous failure has cost America and the world. At the very least, tens of thousands of Gazans would be alive today. Ukraine might be in significantly better shape, as weapons that ended up blowing Gazan children to bits could have gone to fight Russian aggression instead. It’s not impossible that Kamala Harris would be president today; while there’s little evidence that people directly refusing to vote for her because of Gaza made up Trump’s margin of victory, the genocide did badly split the Democratic coalition, deflect attention from Biden’s very real domestic achievements, and badly demoralize the left.
Whatever the case, this is Joe Biden’s legacy. Almost all his highly promising infrastructure and climate programs have gone in the trash. All he’ll be remembered for now is being beaten at humanitarian diplomacy by Donald Trump.