What changed?

At a press conference in the Qatari capital, Doha, on 15 January, the emirate’s premier and foreign minister, Shaikh Muhammad bin Abdul-Rahman al-Thani, announced that Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, had agreed terms for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and an exchange of captives.

It is inconceivable that Shaikh Muhammad would have made this statement without unambiguous confirmation from both Israel and Hamas that they accepted the agreement, as well as assurances from the United States that Israel’s government would formally endorse the negotiated text.

Speaking to Democracy Now! yesterday, Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News said he had seen documentary proof that Hamas had ‘signed and stamped’ the agreement several days earlier. And yet the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, claimed that Hamas was seeking last-minute changes to the text, thereby reneging on the agreement, and that he would therefore not convene his cabinet as planned to ratify the deal.

Less than 24 hours later, Netanyahu indicated that the purported obstacles had been overcome, but the resultant delays may mean the ceasefire will begin not on 19 January, as planned, but the 20th – as it happens, the date of Donald Trump’s second inauguration.

As for the details of the agreement, Ronen Bergman wrote in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that it would take ‘a microscope to find any differences between the deal that was clinched last night between Israel and Hamas, and the proposal Israel submitted to the mediators … on 27 May’.

Bergman was referring to the initiative unveiled last May by the US president, Joe Biden, which Biden at the time specified had been formulated by Netanyahu but was being presented by Washington. Hamas accepted the text in early July, but Israel introduced a variety of additional demands, such as indefinite control of the so-called Netzarim Corridor bisecting the Gaza Strip and what Israel calls the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egyptian border. Netanyahu also proclaimed he would not accept any agreement that resulted in a formal ceasefire, and insisted Israel would resume its rampage once its captives had been retrieved. Why Hamas would ever agree to such a formula was never explained, perhaps because it was obvious it was designed to be rejected. Each of these additional demands, initially presented as bearing profound strategic significance for Israel, has now been conceded by Netanyahu. So what changed?

According to Biden, Israel’s military achievements in recent months left Hamas with no option other than compliance. The assassinations of the Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar and much of Hizbullah’s senior leadership, including its general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, the unprecedented bombing of targets in Iran, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria by the Israeli air force and the overthrow of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad had left the Palestinians weak and isolated.

Yet the first of these developments took place almost a month after Hamas communicated its acceptance of the proposal, so none of them could have been relevant. Biden’s version of events makes sense only if you accept the false claim that Hamas rejected the agreement, and that it is the Palestinians rather than Israelis who have blocked US attempts at diplomacy.

Several Israeli analysts also credit the developments invoked by Biden, but for different reasons. While recognising that it was Israel – and Netanyahu in particular – that prevented an agreement throughout 2024, they also claim that Israel’s military achievements in the second half of last year changed the prime minister’s calculus. Said to recognise that continued military activity is facing diminishing returns as well as growing costs, yet bolstered by a boost in his approval ratings and the recent expansion of his governing coalition, Netanyahu is eager to return to business as usual, and prepared to defy those in his coalition even further to the right than himself to get there. On this account, the primary US role has been not to put pressure on Israel, but rather to provide Netanyahu with a convenient explanation for domestic sceptics of the need to conclude an agreement with Hamas.

Yet the available evidence indicates not only that the US role has been decisive, but also that Netanyahu remains opposed to the deal for a combination of personal, political and ideological reasons. Left to his own devices he would prefer to continue Israel’s genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip, chasing ‘total victory’, establishing a permanent Israeli presence in the territory, and going further to transform the Middle East strategic environment.

The crisis that erupted in October 2023 has once again demonstrated Israel’s extraordinary level of military, political and diplomatic dependence on the US. Before the US presidential election Israel had no reason to defy Washington, for the simple reason that the Biden administration’s support for Israel was total and unconditional. Netanyahu had no need to resist US pressure to reach an agreement, because there was none. Rather than using its immense leverage to push for a ceasefire, Washington supplied Israel with a constant stream of weapons and ammunition, shielded it from diplomatic or legal consequences for turning the Gaza Strip into a killing field, and deflected responsibility for the continuation of the war onto the Palestinians. More than supporting its proxy, the US treated Israel’s conflicts as its own.

This has now changed. For reasons that have little if anything to do with US national security or foreign policy, Donald Trump has made clear he does not want to be diverted by a foreign crisis as he re-enters the White House. Given that several Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip hold dual US citizenship, Trump will not countenance presiding over a hostage crisis like the late Jimmy Carter, but insists on a resolution that has echoes of Ronald Reagan’s assumption of office in 1981.

Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, dispensed with the Biden administration’s policy of collusion with Netanyahu and informed the Israeli leader what was expected of him in no uncertain terms. Days later, the Qatari premier made his announcement.

Given Trump’s intense focus on a smooth inauguration, it is unlikely that there was much haggling involved or that significant commitments were made to Israel in exchange for its ratification of the agreement.

Trump is likely to lose interest, however, once he is again ensconced in the White House. Given that the agreement is to be implemented in three phases, and the details of the second and third have yet to be concluded, there is a real opportunity for Israel to derail it once the first phase concludes after 42 days. The assumption that this agreement is too important to fail and can be pulled up by its bootstraps is a theory previously tested with Oslo, where it resolutely failed. Since most Israeli captives are due for release in the later stages, it may be assumed that domestic pressure will compel Netanyahu to continue negotiating, and that returning to total war is easier said than done. This theory too has been tested, most recently in November 2023, where it fell after the first hurdle.

An argument can be made that local, regional and international circumstances are now sufficiently changed that – especially with Biden out of the picture – Israel will no longer enjoy a blank cheque to conduct atrocities on an industrial scale and unleash further initiatives to transform the Middle East. Against this scenario, key Trump minions appear determined to reignite the region and reshape it in Israel’s image. A return to the strategic neglect that characterised the first three years of the Biden administration may be the most we can hope for. Yet it is also the policy that set the stage for the eruption of the present crisis.