How did the Gaza ceasefire happen? The anti-Israel left, and Democrats rushing to explain why former president Joe Biden could not achieve it, have invented the phony argument one can find prominently displayed in a New York Times “analysis” that asks, “Why Now?” and in the sanctimonious X threads of former Biden officials explaining how they laid the groundwork for this historic deal.
It goes like this: Biden offered similar ceasefire plans a year ago. The hostages would have been home in 2024, and lots of deaths and injuries avoided, if Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not been so nasty and right wing, and had not sought to prolong the war for his personal political advantage.
The truth is that the war ended because Israel and the United States exercised power—political, diplomatic, and military. In June, Israel bombed the Iranian nuclear sites and eliminated many of its top scientists and generals. President Trump followed days later with devastating strikes on the largest Iranian nuclear sites. Israel’s assault on Gaza City, Hamas’s last stronghold, began in late August and taught Hamas that holding hostages would not prevent such an assault. Then on Sept. 9, Israel struck at Hamas leaders in Doha, scaring the Qataris into begging for protection from Trump. He offered it—but it is no coincidence that this was the moment when the Qataris began to pressure Hamas to agree to a ceasefire and to release all the living hostages on day one. It was Qatari diplomatic pressure that brought Turkey to push Hamas for the same concessions.
Democrats acknowledge all this in a backhanded way, though they won’t say it in so many words. Former secretary of state Antony Blinken, for example, told the New York Times that “this is a different moment—we didn’t have then what President Trump has now. Hamas is defeated as a military organization, isolated diplomatically, it’s lost its patrons—Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis … .” Blinken was silent as to how everything that “Trump has now” came about—that is, the use of military power by Netanyahu and Trump in ways that Biden urged the Israelis against and would never have contemplated himself.
Blinken claims that the Biden administration had a plan that would have achieved everything, but when Trump came in, “the moment was squandered.” Some people never learn. There is more candor from former negotiator Brett McGurk, who told the New York Times “the 12-day war with Iran really moved the needle.”
So did Trump’s repeated statements that if Hamas did not agree to stop fighting, he would back Israel fully. Trump said on Sept. 29 that if Hamas did not agree to his 21-point plan, he would “let Israel do what you have to do,” adding that Israel “would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.” Standing next to Netanyahu at the White House, Trump had—much to the chagrin of some New York Times reporters—delivered “an ultimatum to Hamas.”
The facts are plain to see for those not motivated by hatred of Netanyahu and of Trump, or at least by political rivalry with either of them. Israel devastated the military power of Hezbollah; Netanyahu and Trump devastated the military power of Iran; with Trump’s approval, Israel began to conquer Gaza City; and the Israeli attack in Doha created a diplomatic opening when the Qataris concluded that the war must end, and they were willing to give their own ultimatum to Hamas.
Could all that have happened a year ago under Joe Biden? To ask the question is to answer it. In his sad final year in office, and especially after his disastrous debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, and withdrawal from the election on July 21, Biden had no ability to persuade or muscle anyone. He was then the lamest of ducks, after a first half of 2024 in which he demonstrated more and more evidence of advancing age, flagging energy, and lack of concentration.
The ceasefire deal was the product of power well applied by two men who have never been afraid to use it. The notion that all this could have been done by the Biden administration, or could have succeeded before Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran had been dealt smashing blows and the Qataris had been terrified into action against Hamas, is a fantasy. What Biden and his crew never learned, but Trump and Netanyahu understand viscerally, is that the facts on the ground determine the diplomatic outcome—and not vice versa.
Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served as a foreign policy adviser to three Republican presidents, most recently as special envoy for Iran and Venezuela for President Donald Trump.
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