WASHINGTON: After months of gridlock, President Donald Trump finally landed a long-sought Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza — an agreement that only came together after a weekslong diplomacy blitz and a whole lot of help from some Arab and Muslim allies.
The breakthrough is designed to bring about a pause in the fighting unleashed by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The group is expected to release 48 hostages — about 20 of them believed to be alive — in the coming days.
The brutal war finally reached a turning point because a badly battered Hamas recognized the hostages had become more of a liability than an asset, according to two senior US officials who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations.
One of the officials said negotiators, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, believed they finally had an opening when they sensed that “Hamas had enough.”
Still, the way to an agreement had remained complicated, leaving the US administration in the difficult position of negotiating through a thicket of distrust between Israel and its Middle East neighbors that was in danger of further metastasizing.
Major questions remain, including over governance and reconstruction of a territory that largely has been destroyed as well as whether Hamas will disarm — a key Israeli demand that the militants have not yet publicly accepted.
But for now Trump appears to be headed toward a delicate truce and making good on his campaign promise to bring home all remaining hostages.
An Israeli strike on a US ally
In early September, long-running ceasefire talks mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar were at a standstill.
Witkoff had walked away weeks earlier, blaming Hamas. The militant group then accepted a proposal that mediators said was almost identical to one approved by Israel, but there was no public response from Israel or the US
Hamas stuck to its position that it would only release the remaining hostages in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected those terms, saying the war would only end with Hamas’ surrender and the return of all the captives, with Israel maintaining open-ended security control over Gaza.
On Sept. 9, explosions rocked Doha. Israel had carried out an airstrike on Hamas leaders and negotiators as they had gathered to consider the latest ceasefire proposal in Qatar, a close US ally and mediator. The strike killed five lower-ranking Hamas members and a Qatari security forces member.
It infuriated Gulf Arab leaders and angered the White House. Trump quickly went into damage control, seeking to reassure Qatar.
The strike alarmed US allies across the region, including countries like Turkiye and Egypt that have hosted Hamas political leaders. The war that Trump had pledged to end was at risk of spiraling across the Middle East once again.
But the Qataris remained engaged with Witkoff and Kushner, helping Trump’s chief negotiators tailor what would become the president’s 20-point peace plan before he would ultimately present it to other Arab and Muslim countries for support, the US officials said.
Two weeks after the Doha strike, Trump met with the leaders of eight Arab and Muslim nations on the sidelines of an annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations that highlighted Israel’s growing isolation. The president said it was his “most important meeting.”
The president returned to Washington while Witkoff checked into the luxury Regency New York, staying near Kushner’s New York apartment so the two could continue coordinating as they fine-tuned the document.
All the while, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, they continued to meet and hold calls with Arab and Muslim country leaders to try to build support.
A ceasefire plan and an ultimatum
Less than a week later, Witkoff and Kushner were back in Washington with the finalized plan, as the president was set to meet with Netanyahu for the Israeli leader’s fourth visit to the White House this year.
Witkoff and Kushner had come up with the idea of nudging Netanyahu to make a visible gesture toward reconciliation with the Qataris for the strike.
Trump dialed up Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and spoke to him before handing the phone to Netanyahu. The prime minister read from a written apology, expressing his regret for Israel violating Qatari sovereignty with the strike.
The White House later published photos of a grim-faced Trump with the phone awkwardly perched in his lap as Netanyahu delivered the apology.
In a press conference in Washington after the Sept. 29 meeting, Netanyahu said he had accepted Trump’s plan.
Rubio said Trump’s negotiators then stepped up their efforts through intermediaries in Qatar and Egypt to get Hamas on board, while Trump held phone calls and meetings with world leaders.
The US plan calls for Hamas to release all the remaining hostages within 72 hours of the ceasefire in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, to give up power in Gaza and to disarm.
A crucial move by Trump
Hamas during negotiations made clear its willingness to release all hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and to give up power to other Palestinians. But it said other elements of Trump’s plan required more negotiation and offered nothing about disarming, a key Israeli demand.
The response was clearly a “yes, but.”
The US and Israel could have taken it as a “no” and blamed Hamas for the failure to reach a ceasefire on Israel’s terms, as they had in the past. Israel could have vowed to press ahead with its invasion of Gaza City or even expand it.
But when the Hamas response landed late Friday, Israel was largely shut down for the Sabbath, and Trump was first to respond, concluding he believed Hamas was ready for peace.
In a brief statement later that night, Netanyahu said Israel was preparing for the implementation of the “first stage” of Trump’s plan — the release of hostages — and was still committed to ending the war according to its own principles.
It made no mention of the fact that Hamas had not accepted some key demands.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Fox News on Thursday that he and many other Israeli officials were skeptical about Hamas’ heavily qualified acceptance. But he said Trump’s decision to frame it as a sign of momentum created opportunity.
In an interview with Fox News host and ally Sean Hannity after announcing the agreement, the president said he hoped it would help repair Israel’s international standing.
“I spoke to Bibi Netanyahu just a little while ago,” Trump told Hannity, using the Israeli prime minister’s nickname. “I said, ‘Israel cannot fight the world, Bibi.’ They can’t fight the world. And he understands that very well.”
Trump gets long sought Gaza hostage deal with a whole lot of help from Arab and Muslim allies
https://arab.news/6zhng
Trump gets long sought Gaza hostage deal with a whole lot of help from Arab and Muslim allies
‘No one to back us’: Arab bus drivers in Israel grapple with racist attacks
- “People began running toward me and shouting at me, ‘Arab, Arab!’” recalled Khatib, a Palestinian from east Jerusalem
JERUSALEM: What began as an ordinary shift for Jerusalem bus driver Fakhri Khatib ended hours later in tragedy.
A chaotic spiral of events, symptomatic of a surge in racist violence targeting Arab bus drivers in Israel, led to the death of a teenager, Khatib’s arrest and calls for him to be charged with aggravated murder.
His case is an extreme one, but it sheds light on a trend bus drivers have been grappling with for years, with a union counting scores of assaults in Jerusalem alone and advocates lamenting what they describe as an anaemic police response.
One evening in early January, Khatib found his bus surrounded as he drove near the route of a protest by Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
“People began running toward me and shouting at me, ‘Arab, Arab!’” recalled Khatib, a Palestinian from east Jerusalem.
“They were cursing at me and spitting on me, I became very afraid,” he told AFP.
Khatib said he called the police, fearing for his life after seeing soaring numbers of attacks against bus drivers in recent months.
But when no police arrived after a few minutes, Khatib decided to drive off to escape the crowd, unaware that 14-year-old Yosef Eisenthal was holding onto his front bumper.
The Jewish teenager was killed in the incident and Khatib arrested.
Police initially sought charges of aggravated murder but later downgraded them to negligent homicide.
Khatib was released from house arrest in mid-January and is awaiting the final charge.
Breaking windows
Drivers say the violence has spiralled since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023 and continued despite the ceasefire, accusing the state of not doing enough to stamp it out or hold perpetrators to account.
The issue predominantly affects Palestinians from annexed east Jerusalem and the country’s Arab minority, Palestinians who remained in what is now Israel after its creation in 1948 and who make up about a fifth of the population.
Many bus drivers in cities such as Jerusalem and Haifa are Palestinian.
There are no official figures tracking racist attacks against bus drivers in Israel.
But according to the union Koach LaOvdim, or Power to the Workers, which represents around 5,000 of Israel’s roughly 20,000 bus drivers, last year saw a 30 percent increase in attacks.
In Jerusalem alone, Koach LaOvdim recorded 100 cases of physical assault in which a driver had to be evacuated for medical care.
Verbal incidents, the union said, were too numerous to count.
Drivers told AFP that football matches were often flashpoints for attacks — the most notorious being those of the Beitar Jerusalem club, some of whose fans have a reputation for anti-Arab violence.
The situation got so bad at the end of last year that the Israeli-Palestinian grassroots group Standing Together organized a “protective presence” on buses, a tactic normally used to deter settler violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
One evening in early February, a handful of progressive activists boarded buses outside Jerusalem’s Teddy Stadium to document instances of violence and defuse the situation if necessary.
“We can see that it escalates sometimes toward breaking windows or hurting the bus drivers,” activist Elyashiv Newman told AFP.
Outside the stadium, an AFP journalist saw young football fans kicking, hitting and shouting at a bus.
One driver, speaking on condition of anonymity, blamed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for whipping up the violence.
“We have no one to back us, only God.”
‘Crossing a red line’
“What hurts us is not only the racism, but the police handling of this matter,” said Mohamed Hresh, a 39-year-old Arab-Israeli bus driver who is also a leader within Koach LaOvdim.
He condemned a lack of arrests despite video evidence of assaults, and the fact that authorities dropped the vast majority of cases without charging anyone.
Israeli police did not respond to AFP requests for comment on the matter.
In early February, the transport ministry launched a pilot bus security unit in several cities including Jerusalem, where rapid-response motorcycle teams will work in coordination with police.
Transport Minister Miri Regev said the move came as violence on public transport was “crossing a red line” in the country.
Micha Vaknin, 50, a Jewish bus driver and also a leader within Koach LaOvdim, welcomed the move as a first step.
For him and his colleague Hresh, solidarity among Jewish and Arab drivers in the face of rising division was crucial for change.
“We will have to stay together,” Vaknin said, “not be torn apart.”
