“Intellectual Integrity Is Called For. The Coming Return of the Hostages and the End to the Fighting are the Work of Donald Trump”

The cease fire confirmed what has long been obvious. The Biden administration could have negotiated an agreement if the president had not been such a feckless toadstool.

Anthony Blinken really wanted to stop the genocide but he was very busy. Photo via Wikimedia Coomons/Public domain.

During the roughly 15 months that have passed since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched its assault on Gaza, at least 46,000 Palestinians were killed, the overwhelming majority civilians, almost almost women and children, turning Gaza into the country with the largest per capita number of child amputees, vast numbers more died of disease, malnutrition and other results of the war, nearly the entire population of 2.3 million people were forcibly displaced, and the horrors went on and on, and on, the first ethnic cleansing campaign and genocide broadcast live on TV.

Throughout the period, President Biden insisted he was doing everything possible to end the fighting and protect Palestinian lives, but sadly the US simply didn’t have the leverage to force Israel to halt the bloodshed. It was always a ridiculous argument, as Israel could not have prosecuted its assault on Palestine without US weapons — at least if the occupant of the White House had a backbone, instead of wringing his hands and claiming he was trying his best, even as he signed the paperwork to authorize the latest weapons shipments to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

It will be a bitter bill for the president and Biden dead-enders to swallow, and I expect they’ll refuse to acknowledge it, but his administration played no significant role in the cease fire agreement that will finally, at least briefly, end the bloodshed. As an article published in Haaretz today put it:

The coming return of the hostages and the end to the fighting are the work of Donald Trump, , t 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."

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. 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.

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.

The writer of the article is not a fan of Trump, who he called is “a horrible, unstable and dangerous person” who “caused tremendous damage to the US and the entire Western world in his first term. However, he wrote, “intellectual integrity is called for.”

The cease fire was forced on Netanyahu by President-elect Trump and his Mideast Envoy Steven Witkoff, who accomplished “in one meeting what Biden officials failed to do in over a year,” said another article in the Israeli newspaper that ran today. Haaretz has reported the details over the last 48 hours, which depict Biden as a feckless toadstool, as was clear all along.

“Trump Scared Netanyahu Into Accepting a Cease-fire Deal With Hamas,” said the headline of an article published yesterday. “Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejected this same hostage deal when the Biden administration proposed it months ago, has now been bulldozed into wide-ranging concessions.” Trump put “enormous pressure on both sides and on mediators Egypt and Qatar,” which finally brought about the deal, which “Netanyahu did not want…The rapidity with which Netanyahu retreated from this principle under pressure from Trump attests to the real weight of this argument.”

The Israeli public will be surprised when it finds out what the person who says he wishes to be remembered as Israel's defender had to concede during the negotiations. It's not just control of the Philadelphi route, but also the Netzarim corridor, including the ability to genuinely monitor the return of over one million Palestinian civilians to northern Gaza. He also agreed to allow the entry of 600 trucks with humanitarian aid per day, 100 more than the daily average before the war.

During the months in which he rejected the plan, which had already been proposed last May by the Biden administration, Netanyahu was mainly worried about his radical right-wing allies Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who threatened to dismantle his coalition. It now appears that Trump left him with no other choice. For years, people have been saying that Netanyahu is the sum of all his fears; it turns out that Trump scares him even more, perhaps justifiably so.

“Trump's Mideast Envoy Forced Netanyahu to Accept a Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected,” said another headline Thursday:

Last Friday evening, Steven Witkoff, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, called from Qatar to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's aides that he would be coming to Israel the following afternoon. The aides politely explained that was in the middle of the Sabbath but that the prime minister would gladly meet him Saturday night.

A week before Trump's inauguration, Jerusalem already sees a change in the rules of the game that has broken the deadlock in the hostage negotiations. Unusually, the outgoing Biden administration has let Witkoff lead the process, on the grounds that any obligations the United States undertakes will be incumbent on Trump, not on Biden.

Witkoff's blunt reaction took them by surprise. He explained to them in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him. His message was loud and clear. Thus in an unusual departure from official practice, the prime minister showed up at his office for an official meeting with Witkoff, who then returned to Qatar to seal the deal.

“Israel's Far Right Now Realizes Trump Isn't the Savior They Imagined” and “Hell and Bombs: Both Biden and Trump Now Know That Israel Only Understands Force,” said two other headlines yesterday. The latter featured the names of both US presidents but only gave credit to one.“The hollow expression coined by Trump, ‘all hell will break out’ – without indicating what hell and who will walk through its gates – is the factor that turned the magic key needed to compel Netanyahu to agree to a deal that Biden laid on his desk many months ago,” it said.

Will the cease fire deal hold? We’ll have to wait and see. Is this the first step in Trump’s emergence as a champion of Palestinians? Obviously not, his first administration was reflexively pro-Israel and his next one is highly unlikely to be any different. Did Trump push the deal for PR purposes as he prepares his return to the White House? Could be. What I do know is ramming through the deal was better than doing nothing but stand aside and watch as the Israel Defense Forces cheerfully went about its business of obliterating Gaza while committing daily war crimes during its ethnic cleansing campaign.

What we know for sure is that Biden could “have ended the war in the north earlier, with all its casualties and damages,” as it was put in the first of today’s articles I cited in this story. “What a terrible crime...has been committed” by the Netanyahu government, “courtesy of an empathetic and impotent American administration.

Another issue is also clear: All the think tank experts, journalists, and everyone else who regurgitated White House talking points to justify its inaction were accomplices of what President Biden and the pathetic Blinken allowed to happen and played an essential role in facilitating.