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
Lifting sanctions on Syria will prevent Daesh resurgence and strengthen the nation, experts say
- Conference in Washington discusses effects US policies are having on post-Assad Syria, and the continuing economic hardships in the country that could fuel terrorism
- Participants praise US President Donald Trump for taking the right steps to help the war-torn nation move towards recovery and stabilization
Syria faces serious challenges in the aftermath of the fall of the Assad regime a year ago, including rebuilding its economy, lifting refugees and civilians out of poverty, and preventing a resurgence of Daesh terrorism.
But experts in two panel discussions during a conference at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, attended by Arab News, agreed that US President Donald Trump had so far taken all the right steps to help the war-torn nation move toward recovery and stabilization.
One of the discussions explored the effects American policies are having on the rebuilding of Syria, including the lifting of sanctions and efforts to attract outside investments and stabilize the economy. Moderated by the institute’s vice president for policy, Kenneth Pollack, the participants included retired ambassadors Robert Ford and Barbara Leaf, and Charles Lister, a resident fellow at the institute.
The other discussion focused on the continuing economic hardships in Syria that could fuel terrorism, including a resurgence of Daesh. Moderator Elizabeth Hagedorn, of Washington-based Middle East news website Al-Monitor, was joined by Mohammed Alaa Ghanem of the Syrian American Council, Celine Kasem of Syria Now, and Jay Salkini from the US-Syria Business Council.
“As we went into a transitional era, US diplomacy took a back step for a while as the Trump administration came into office,” Lister noted during the first panel discussion.
Everyone has been “super skeptical” of where the new government led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, a former commander with the Syrian opposition forces, would lead the country, he said, but Trump had stepped up through policies and support.
“Frankly, I think in January none of us expected that President Donald Trump would be shaking hands with Ahmad Al-Sharaa” a few months later, he added.
“Despite the obvious challenges, this new (Syrian) government has to be engaged.”
The US had maintained strong ties to the Syrian Democratic Forces, and with Al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, Lister said, in the decade leading up to the collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime on Dec. 8, 2024.
“Of course, we’ve had 10 years of a superb partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces, but they were a non-state actor not a sovereign government,” he continued.
“Now, we have a sovereign government that we could test, we can engage, and we can see where that goes. And in working through a sovereign government, there is no comparison that comes anywhere close to what we’ve seen on Syria.”
Lister praised Trump, saying: “I think a lot of that goes down to President Trump’s own kind of gut instinct of the way to do things.
“But there is a deeper, deeper government bench that has worked on this through Treasury and State and elsewhere. I think they all deserve credit for moving so rapidly and so boldly to give Syria a chance, as President Trump says.”
Ford said a key aspect of the process as Syria moves forward will be the removal of all sanctions imposed by the US against the Assad regime under the 2019 Caesar Act, an effort that is now underway in Congress.
He said Trump recognizes that the future of Syria and the wider Middle East lies in the hands of the Arab people, and has pursued policies based on “shared interests” including a “national security
strategy” to help the war-torn country shift away from extremism and violence toward a productive economy and safer environment for its people.
The Trump administration recognizes this reality, Ford added, and will “work on a practical level towards shared interests.”
However, he cautioned that “Syria is not out of the woods, by any stretch of the imagination” in terms of ensuring there is no resurgence of violence driven by desperate people burdened by the harsh economic realities in the country.
“If they can work with the Syrian government, and with more and more important regional actors as the United States retrenches — like Israel, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt; it’s a long list — it will become more important,” Ford said.
“There is still a way for the Americans to work with all of them, even if we don’t have big boots on the ground, or if we’re not providing billions of dollars.”
Nonetheless, “America’s voice will still be heard,” he added, thanks to the interest Trump is taking in Syria.
Adopted by Congress six years ago, toward the end of Trump’s first term as president, the Caesar Act imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Syria, including measures that targeted Assad and his family in an attempt to ensure his regime would be held accountable for war crimes committed under its reign. The act was named after a photographer who leaked images of torture taking place in Assad’s prisons.
Lister noted that the removal of the US sanctions has been progressing at “record-breaking speeds.”
In pre-taped opening remarks to the conference, which took place at the institute’s offices in Washington, Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of the US Central Command, said the Trump administration’s priority in Syria is the “aggressive and relentless pursuit” of Daesh, while working on the integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces with the new Syrian government through American military coordination.
“Just to give an example, in the month of October, US forces advised, assisted and enabled Syrian partners during more than 20 operations against (Daesh), diminishing the terrorists’ attacks and export of violence around the world,” he said. “We’re also degrading their ability to regenerate.”
Cooper added that the issue of displacement camps in northeastern Syria must also be addressed. He said he has visited Al-Hawl camp four times since his first meeting with Al-Sharaa, “which reinforced my view of the need to accelerate repatriations.”
He continued: “The impact on displaced persons devastated by years of war and repression has been immense. As I mentioned in a late-September speech at the UN, continuing to repatriate displaced persons and detainees in Syria is both a humanitarian imperative and a strategic necessity.”
The US is working with Syrian forces to “supercharge” this effort, Cooper said, noting that the populations of Al-Hawl and Al-Roj camps have fallen from 70,000 to about 26,000.
The second panel discussion painted a very bleak picture of the economic challenges the Syrian people face, with the average income only $200-$300 a month, a level that the experts warned could push desperate people to violence just to survive.
The US-Syria Business Council’s Salkini said many major companies and factories that once operated in Syria had relocated to neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Iraq and Turkiye.
“We’re looking at about 50 percent-plus unemployment,” he said. “Let me give you statistics on the wages: A factory worker today, his salary is $100-$300 a month. A farmer makes $75-$200 a month in salary. A manager (or) a private in the military makes $250 a month.
“So you can imagine how these people are living on these low wages, and still have to buy their iPhone, their internet, pay for electricity.”
Many displaced people are unable to return to their former homes, the panelists said, because they were destroyed during the war and there is no accessible construction industry to rebuild them.
The capital, Damascus, faces many challenges they added, and the situation is even worse in the country.
