Why Couldn’t Biden Get the Results Trump Just Did in the Middle East?

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One week after President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas, many are wondering why President Joe Biden couldn’t extract the same deal, despite his fervent efforts. It’s a fair question, but no less fair is this: Why didn’t Trump strike this deal a few weeks, rather than nine months, after he took office?

The deal Trump sparked was no small achievement^[2], but it wasn’t the first negotiated pause in the war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas militias crashed across the Israeli border and killed 1,200 Jews, most of them civilians.

Biden hammered out the first deal toward an armistice on Nov. 23 of that year^[3], just a month and a half after the war began. It called for a four-day ceasefire, the release of 50 Israeli hostages and 50 Palestinian prisoners, and the release of 10 more with each day’s extension of the truce. Biden’s hope was that the incentive would lead to the freeing of all hostages and a permanent peace. The guns were silent for six days; 105 hostages^[4] and 240 Palestinians^[5] were released, but then the war resumed, with each side claiming the other had violated the deal’s terms.

The fact was, neither Israel nor Hamas wanted the war to end. Israel wanted to destroy Hamas as a political and military entity; Hamas, by this point, may have seen the impracticality of its ultimate goal (the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state), but it still wanted Israel to withdraw from Gaza. The Israeli army still had a lot of targets in Gaza to hit; Hamas still had a lot of material support from its allies in the region. Both thought they might achieve their goals by resuming the war.

Negotiations continued through intermediaries—mainly the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt—but they were doomed to failure as long as the combatants’ interests were irreconcilable and their determination to keep fighting was so intense.

The war might have ended if outside powers had stepped up their pressure. That is how all the Arab-Israeli wars since 1948 have been ended^[6]—U.S. pressure on Israel, Soviet pressure on the Arabs (during the Cold War), U.N. pressure on both, or a combination of all three. When Israel started pounding Gaza with what many saw as disproportionate force (e.g., demolishing schools, hospitals, and whole neighborhoods^[7] with 2,000 lb. bombs^[8]), Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dial it back—but he never applied real pressure, never threatened sanctions or a full cutoff of arms supplies, even though some of Biden’s top aides advised him to do so. At the start of the war, Biden had made a shrewd calculation; he publicly embraced Netanyahu and Israel while privately pushing them not to let rage govern their actions (and this strategy led to the November ceasefire). But he didn’t fully recognize Netanyahu’s maximalist objectives. As Netanyahu saw that he could step up his attacks with no tangible penalties, he ignored Biden’s lectures—nodding gravely but brushing them away in his mind.

A complicating fact was that, throughout the year, Israel kept coming under assault from missiles fired by Hezbollah on its northern border, by Houthi rebels to the west, and sometimes directly by Iran. Biden still regarded Israel as a major ally and so felt he couldn’t cut off military aid while it was under direct attack; other Western leaders continued to provide aid.

In any case, the Sunni Arab leaders had no fondness for Hamas; some of them—the Saudis, Egyptians, and Gulf emirates—wanted to deepen their relations with Israel, in part because of the common threat they faced from Iran and its Shiite militias. They had the power to pressure Hamas. But they couldn’t do so—for fear of alienating their own populations—as long as Israel kept bombarding Palestinians in Gaza with no restraint.

So, the war persisted and the destruction of Gaza intensified, even as talks for peace continued, until Jan. 15, 2025, just a few days before the end of Biden’s term and the beginning of Trump’s, when Qatar, on behalf of Hamas, agreed to a 42-day ceasefire^[9] that also involved the release of more hostages and prisoners.

Several events had occurred in the interim, greatly boosting Israel’s leverage and gravely reducing that of Hamas. The head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, was killed^[10] in southern Gaza. Hezbollah was decimated in an intricately planned Israeli sabotage attack^[11], and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Israel destroyed Iran’s air-defense system in retaliation to an Iranian missile strike, thus leaving the Iranians’ vital assets vulnerable if they attacked again. Bashar al-Assad fled Syria after his army collapsed under an insurgency’s attack.

Finally, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s friend and fellow real-estate tycoon who was about to become his Middle East envoy, firmly told Netanyahu that the incoming president^[12]—who enjoyed a much warmer relationship with the Israeli prime minister than Biden had—needed a ceasefire to start his term. Netanyahu, at some political risk, agreed; Witkoff, working with Biden’s chief emissary, Brett McGurk, put the final pieces in place.

The ceasefire, hostage exchange, and provision of humanitarian aid—which stayed in place for six weeks—were said to mark the first phase of a multiphase accord. The second phase was to include a further withdrawal of Israeli troops and Hamas’ release of all remaining hostages. But then, Netanyahu altered the terms of Israel’s withdrawal^[13]. Hamas refused to release all the hostages before this withdrawal. The deal collapsed. The fighting resumed.

This was in mid-March. Trump could have pressured Netanyahu to stick to the schedule for withdrawal; had he done so, Qatar, Egypt, and others might have pressured Hamas to keep releasing hostages. The fighting might have stopped for good. But Trump was telling Netanyahu to “finish” the war^[14], by whatever means necessary. Trump was also spinning fantasies^[15] of expelling all the Palestinians in Gaza to some distant promised land and turning the strip into a Middle Eastern Riviera. His ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee^[16], was denying the existence of “occupied territories,” saying Israel was entitled to Gaza and the West Bank. Netanyahu felt he had a green light to bomb Gaza as much as he wanted.

Nothing changed over the next several months, until Netanyahu went a step too far^[17]. He tried to kill top Hamas negotiators by dropping bombs on where they were staying in Qatar—i.e., he dropped bombs on Qatari territory. The Qataris were outraged. And, to the surprise of Netanyahu, Trump was outraged too.

Qatar, a tiny oil-rich emirate, plays an unusual dual role in the region, as a supplier and middleman for Hamas (a role encouraged several years ago by both the U.S. and Israel^[18]) and also a major U.S. ally—chiefly as the host of the largest American military base in the Middle East^[19]. The emir of Qatar is also very friendly with Trump, having given him, as a present, a $400 million jetliner^[20] to use as the next Air Force One.

Trump made Netanyahu phone^[21] Qatar’s prime minister and apologize for the bombing—and agree to a revived ceasefire and hostage-exchange deal. Trump then presented the deal to the Arab leaders, assuring them he had Netanyahu’s pledge to sign it. He also told them he would never let Netanyahu annex the West Bank^[22], and he snuffed out his Riviera pipe dream, saying that Palestinians could stay in Gaza and, if they left, they could return. When the deal was ready to be signed this past Monday, all the region’s powers—including Egypt and Turkey—were present. Some congratulated Trump and said that, while he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize (it was awarded just before to Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado), he should nab the honor next year.

No one should understate the significance of the agreement. The fighting has stopped; Gazans have returned to their homes (if the homes are still standing); Israel is allowing the U.N. to rush in more aid than before. Most remarkably, Hamas freed all of the remaining hostages before Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza—something that had previously seemed impossible.

However, some perspective is warranted. The steps taken in the last week are basically the steps that were scheduled to take place in Phase 2 of the deal negotiated at the end of Biden’s term with the aid of Trump’s team and with Trump’s endorsement. In other words, Trump was well-positioned, and should have been motivated, to enforce it this past March—but didn’t.

The steps—again, remarkable in themselves—comprise but a few articles of the 20-plank accord^[28] that Trump put on the table, with the assistance of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The other planks call for Hamas to disarm and relinquish all political power in Gaza. They also call for a multinational group to secure and rebuild Gaza, as well as somehow reform the Palestinian Authority (or something like it), so that it can govern Gaza. In addition, Israel will eventually have to withdraw its troops from Gaza, except perhaps for a thin buffer layer along the border, and resume negotiations toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

As of now, Israel and Hamas have agreed to none of these planks. A spokesman for Hamas has said the group will not disarm^[29]. Trump has said, “We will disarm them,”^[30] if they don’t do so on their own, though he didn’t say how or identify “we.” Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he will never permit the formation of a Palestinian state. Who will organize and fund the entity that rebuilds Gaza, reforms the Palestinian Authority, and secures the border on both sides—none of this is as yet known.

It is a rare feat that so many players in the region have agreed in principle to do the things that outside powers will need to do. But it is important to note that actually getting it done—or even laying down some vague outline of how to get it done—will be much harder than anything that these countries have agreed to do so far.

Trump deserves some credit for pushing things as far as they’ve been pushed. But less than one week into the ceasefire, it’s premature to say conclusively just what he’s done.

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