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Can Trump turn a Gaza ceasefire into a lasting peace deal?
00:20:00
Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of a peace deal
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- [00:00]
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Sarah Smith
Donald Trump says Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of his Gaza ceasefire deal. This is potentially an enormous moment, but it's also rather thin on detail and the way forward for both sides remains unclear at the moment. So how did we get here? Well, what happens next? And could this deal be Donald Trump's lasting legacy in the Middle East? Welcome to AmericasT.
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Podcast Host
AmericasT AmericasT from BBC News, when Donald.
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Anthony Zurcher
Trump calls, they say, yes, sir, right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir.
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Donald Trump
We are the sickest country in the world.
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Podcast Host
Oh dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry?
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Anthony Zurcher
Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question.
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Donald Trump (continued)
Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
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Sarah Smith
Hello, it is Sarah here in the BBC's bureau in Washington.
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Anthony Zurcher
And it's Anthony right next to Sarah here in Washington.
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Sarah Smith
And this is where I was yesterday, Anthony, when Donald Trump was doing that televised event in the White House that was about left wing extremists. And he was there with his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, who was talking about law enforcement. As she was speaking, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, was actually leaning over and passing Donald Trump a scribbled note and whispering in his ear. And this is what we all saw and heard.
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Podcast Host
Well, they're smart, but they're not smart enough.
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Sarah Smith
They.
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Podcast Host
Oh, my microphone's broken. They're smart, but they're not smart enough. They to find the criminal conspiracy.
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Donald Trump (continued)
Okay, I'm just giving. Yeah, I was just giving a name note by the Secretary of State saying that we're very close to a deal in the Middle east and they're going to need me pretty quickly. So I will take a couple of more questions.
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Anthony Zurcher
Yeah, breaking news there and the note. Apparently an AP photographer got a shot of it and it said, we need you to approve a Truth Social post so that you can announce this peace deal first. It kind of shows you exactly how much emphasis this administration puts places, one on being first and two on Donald Trump's Truth Social feed.
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Sarah Smith
And it was quite a post that then went out, wasn't it? This is a strong, durable and everlasting peace, he said. Now it's exciting and it's optimistic, but I don't think there's any evidence yet that it's strong, durable and everlasting, is it? What have they actually signed up to?
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Anthony Zurcher
It seems like they both signed off on phase one last week. We got this peace plan, this 20 point peace plan that Donald Trump had said that Israel signed off on, that the Gulf states had signed off on and Hamas needed to agree to. And phase one of that plan involves the release of all the hostages, living and dead. And then in exchange, Israel would pull back out of Gaza to predetermined lines. Not a total withdrawal, but at least the beginnings of movements away from the central part of Gaza and also release a number of over a thousand detainees that had been Palestinians that had been held in Israeli prisons after October 7, and then a number of other Palestinian prisoners who have been there for longer. So it is a major step. I mean, this is something that the Biden administration had been trying to do, the Trump administration had been trying to do when they're eight months back in office for a long time and that is get the hostages home. And it seems like Hamas has agreed to that and that hostage releases could start very soon.
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Sarah Smith
Yeah, and Donald Trump wasn't slow to take a victory lap on that either. He then gave an interview to Sean Hannity on Fox News saying that that all of those hostages would probably be released by Monday.
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Donald Trump
A lot of things are happening right now as we speak. So much is happening to get the hostages freed and we think they'll all be coming back on Monday. So it looks like that's the thing. And that'll include the bodies of the dead. We're forming a council that the Council of Peace, we think it's going to be called, and it's going to be very powerful and it's going to really, I think, to a large extent, it's going to have a lot to do with the whole Gaza situation. People are going to be taken care of.
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Sarah Smith
So, yes, talking about going on to how Gaza will be run by this Council of Peace, which is what Sir Tony Blair is potentially going to be involved in as well. He's getting a little bit ahead of what's been agreed so far because as you said, Anthony, it's about the hostages, prisoner releases and a slight withdrawal of Israeli forces. But even if that's all we've got so far, it is a major diplomatic achievement, isn't it? I mean, it's not just that Joe Biden didn't achieve this. This is closer to a settlement potentially in the Middle east than many, many American presidents have achieved.
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Anthony Zurcher
Right. Trump talks about this could be a 3,000 year peace and we are very far from anything like that. Yet Even if this 20 point plan goes into effect, it might get us back to where in the late 90s, with a certain amount of self governance in Gaza, where Palestinians were running the operation, that there was support from other Gulf states, rebuilding, money coming in, investment coming in, it still would be a major achievement just to get back to there, given everything that's happened the last 20 years in Gaza and particularly in the last two years since the October 7th attack. And so I guess we have to ask ourselves, how do we get here? How did Donald Trump break through where Biden hadn't? And I think part of the answer is just Israel wasn't ready. Israel wasn't ready to negotiate. Israel wasn't ready to end their military offensive in Gaza against Hezbollah, in the north, against Iran. They wanted to tick through a lot of this. And I think also, and you've heard this from Trump administration officials on background, but that strike that the Israelis launched on Doha, on Qatar, really pushed Trump to say enough is enough. Netanyahu, they've had a warm relationship in the past. The Trump administration has been willing to be critical of Netanyahu over the course of the last eight months. But that was the last straw. And Trump then turned to saying, Netanyahu, you've got to end this. And we saw that actually when Netanyahu visited the White House and Trump made him apologize to Khadr on the phone while he was sitting there. That felt like. And that is being pointed to now as the turning point in all of this.
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Sarah Smith
Yeah. What I think is really fascinating about the way in which Donald Trump has managed this process is that he says repeatedly, I am the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. And Netanyahu usually repeats that if he stood beside him at the time. And yet he has been prepared to put more pressure on Israel than just about any previous president has been able to, because usually they're so keen to demonstrate their support for Israel that they daren't try and either pressure or frankly bully them into doing things they wouldn't want to do. But it was pretty clear, certainly over the last week or so, that Netanyahu was having his arm twisted very hard into this. As you say, it was just over a week ago he was at the White House. First of all, not only is he made to telephone the Qatari Prime Minister and apologize for that bombing strike on Qatar that was aimed at the Hamas negotiating team. So he's made to read out a script written by the White House and they even release photographs of him on the phone in the Oval Office doing that. And then he is made to overcome quite significant reluctance, I think, and sign up to this 20 point plan, come out and stand in front of a press conference and announce that this is what he's going to do. It's almost as though Donald Trump's rather transactional, rather bullying, overbearing manner of doing things was the one thing that worked, right?
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Anthony Zurcher
And even before Trump came back into office, Steve Witkoff, who's the diplomatic jack of all trades for Trump, who has been instrumental in negotiating this deal, there are reports about how he had picked up the phone and told Netanyahu, you got to have a temporary cease fire. You have to let them release some of the hostages. Which is what happened shortly after those calls were made. We heard just a few months ago background reports that Trump is fed up with Netanyahu. There are quotes from senior administration officials say Netanyahu, all he wants to do is blow things up and he's being totally uncooperative. I mean, it's a willingness this administration had to push back against him in ways that we didn't really see with Biden. And the circumstances with Biden were different. Biden one had divisions within his own party and he had to be aware that there were, you know, Jewish Democrats who are very much in favor of supporting Israel. There are others who are very much critical of Biden's foreign policy. And what they, what the Biden administration kept saying was that, well, we can't push Israel too far. We cannot get them to where they totally shut us out and do their own thing. It's better to be inside the tent, in the room, counseling them to moderate their actions, rather than to have totally closed off the avenues of communication with them, and that's how they conducted themselves. That's not something that the Trump administration was as concerned with, apparently. And I think it goes back to what you said, this kind of history that Trump had with Netanyahu, dating back to the first term, and moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and allowing them to increase settlements in the West Bank. All of these things, I think, bought the Trump administration a little more good favor with Netanyahu. That let them then clench the fist and push them around a little bit.
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Sarah Smith
Well, there's that, but there's also the enormous amounts of military aid that the US supplies to Israel, who couldn't be conducting this war in Gaza without it. And he was just prepared to use that as better leverage, wasn't he, than President Biden ever managed to. Whether it was because he didn't want to or because he simply wasn't as good a negotiator, it seems as though Donald Trump is incredibly good at spotting what cards he has to play and playing them very, very well and not being frightened of going into a hardball negotiation, even with somebody who's normally one of the US's closest allies, if he can see there's something in it for him. And for him, what was in it was his reputation as a peacemaker. We could talk about the Nobel Peace Prize a little bit later, but, you know, he wanted to achieve something here and he went all out for it.
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Anthony Zurcher
Yeah. Another thing Trump is good at, and we saw this in his first term, is being totally over the top sometimes in his threats, in his demands. I mean, you remember the feud he had with Kim Jong Un in North Korea and calling him missile man and warning about fire and fury, and everyone was like, oh, my gosh, we're going to end up going to war with North Korea. And then he ended up negotiating with Kim Jong Un and having a much more kind of a conventional relationship with him. And I think we saw that this year as well, with the war in Gaza and Trump talking about turning Gaza into a Riviera and deporting, moving out all of the Palestinians from Gaza, resettling them somewhere else. And a lot of people said, oh, my gosh, you know, that's outrageous. The Arab countries are going to be up in arms. And he ended up someplace much more conventional in these negotiations, something I think the Biden administration would have been perfectly happy to sign off on. And we're trying to get, you know, a ceasefire withdrawal in exchange for the hostages being released. And so I think it goes to Trump's negotiating style and maybe the effectiveness of it. And also, I think something that's worth keeping in mind here is not just Trump's relationship with Israel and Netanyahu, but also his relationship with the Gulf states and with Saudi Arabia and with Qatar. I mean, there's a history there. Perhaps, Sarah, you'd agree that. That this was something he was able to use to help further these negotiations.
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Sarah Smith
Yes, absolutely. Because one of the important things was not just that he managed to get Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu to sign up to this, but that all the Gulf states have signed off on it as well, because for all the leverage that Donald Trump might have over Israel, he needed the Gulf states to persuade Hamas. And it was interesting, wasn't it, that over the last few days, whilst this has been getting closer to being agreed, there were American negotiators in Egypt and Sharm El Sheikh talking, but there were also Qataris and Turkey were there as well in order to work as interlocutors with Hamas, which is. It's an interesting mix of the way in which this pressure has been applied. I wonder, though, whether he's going to be able to keep up the pressure on Hamas to the same extent, because this only works the next phase if they agree to disarm. And that's a very big deal, isn't it? Them giving up, signing up to peaceful means only and giving up their arms. That's not something that they've publicly said. Yeah, they're prepared to agree to.
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Anthony Zurcher
Yeah, that's a huge step and one we're not close at yet, and something that Hamas has refused, categorically refused to do up until this point. Maybe they feel like they're in such a situation where they. They have to, but that is. That is going to be the thing to watch from here, and whether they hand over power to this technocratic governing agency, the Peace Council. I mean, talk about the Trumpism. If this were a traditionally negotiated diplomatic agreement, it would have some sort of legalese, bureaucratic name, the Joint Committee to Govern, the Interim Palestinian Authority, whatever. Instead, with Trump, it's the Council for Peace. It sounds so much more kind of Trumpian in its simplicity of words, but also kind of the grandiosity of it.
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Sarah Smith
Yeah, I guess when you're talking about how this isn't being done by the normal diplomatic means, it's worth pointing out that usually a lot of fine detail would be agreed before anything is announced. But what we've had here is last week, standing beside Netanyahu in the White House, he announces this rather vague, to be honest, 20 point plan that really didn't have much detail in it at all. Now we're talking about the first phase having been agreed to and there have been talks about putting a bit more flesh on those bones, but at the same time, this just doesn't have the level of granular detail you would normally expect. He's prepared to force things along by saying, well, we've got a heads of agreement, we've got the concepts of a plan here. Let's push on with it rather than worrying about getting bogged down in the detail.
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Anthony Zurcher
Right, right. And jumping off the cliff and then figuring out how to build your parachute as you're coming down. But I mean, it's working so far. And again, you have to emphasize what an accomplishment it is just to get the hostages released and just to get Israel to agree to pull back a little bit and have a ceasefire. So this is a major step, but it also is just the first step, not the final one.
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Sarah Smith
Yeah, I mean, Donald Trump is getting praise from some quarters who are not normally very generous about him. So David Axelrod, who was Barack Obama's chief strategist when he was in the White House, posted on x. There is so much that troubles me about this president. But if this agreement holds, the hostages are released, the bombs stop falling and there is a framework for peace after these two ghastly years, it will be a great and welcome achievement. And that's it, isn't it? Everybody has their fingers crossed that this will hold and that this will turn out to have been a remarkable achievement. And generously, people do seem to be prepared to give Donald Trump the credit. And if that's what he's pulled off.
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Anthony Zurcher
All right. Well, perhaps not coincidentally, we're going to have the announcement for the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow. It's something that Donald Trump has coveted, clearly, and one that seemed very distant before. But maybe now, if all of this happens, and as we mentioned, there's still a long way to go, but if all of this happens, he might be better positioned to win. Maybe not tomorrow, but sometime in the future.
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Sarah Smith
Yeah, he was talking about it himself yesterday. Wednesday, Donald Trump at that same event where he was handed the note by Marco Rubio. He was asked about the peace deal. He wasn't exactly subtle about who he thought should win it. So the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday.
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Podcast Host
You've been nominated by many world leaders.
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Donald Trump (continued)
By many, many countries.
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Podcast Host
By many countries, as well as the hostage families.
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Anthony Zurcher
Do you think you will win?
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Donald Trump (continued)
I have no idea. I mean, look, I did settle. Marco would tell you we settled seven wars, we're close to settling an eighth. And I think we'll end up settling the Russia situation, which is horrible. Seven thousand people died last week, by the way, in Russia. Between Russia and Ukraine, I think we'll settle that. So I don't think anybody in history has settled that more that many. But perhaps they'll find a reason not to give it to me, you know.
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Sarah Smith
Well, the reason not to give it to him would be that, one, we don't know whether this peace deal is going to hold, and two, it's usually given for the work that happened in the year previous. So, yes, if this does hold and turns into the enduring peace he says it's going to be, then he would be very well placed to win that prize next year. But if in the midst of this, it's announced on Friday and it's not him, he's going to be furious, isn't he?
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Anthony Zurcher
Yeah, it is remarkable, an American president so openly lobbying for the peace prize. But, yeah, we've got a year to see how this all shakes out and a year where other things could happen. I mean, we've been bombing Venezuelan and now a Colombian boat in the Caribbean Sea. It's going to be interesting to see how the Peace Committee, if they are weighing this next year, balances what could be a triumphant peace deal in this war with other things Donald Trump is doing.
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Sarah Smith
Yeah, and the next thing he's going to do is to go to Israel himself on Sunday, possibly Egypt on Monday. So that will be a bit of a victory lap, especially if he gets to meet any of the hostages who are released. But at the same time could well be laying the groundwork for the next phase of this, and we'll see whether or not he really is able to achieve what he says he's done.
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Anthony Zurcher
Not officially announced the trip yet, but he did mention that he was looking at going, and that seems to be the timeline he wants to get there and he wants to preside over all of this, this, which obviously would be another big moment and another big triumph for Trump and make for some interesting viewing.
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Sarah Smith
Yes. And who knows, either you or I, or possibly both of us might get to follow him there, in which case we'll bring all our Americas as the very latest from there. But, yeah, until then, we should conclude now and run off to carry on our reporting on this. Yep.
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Anthony Zurcher
Back to work, Sarah.
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Sarah Smith
Bye, bye.
- [20:01]
Anthony Zurcher
Bye.
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Podcast Host
Americast. Americast from BBC News.
- [20:08]
Podcast Outro Host
Well, look, thanks for listening all the way to the end. Of today's AmericasT. You are now officially an AmericasT. It is of course a ride, a wild ride, navigating the US News, particularly in the era of Trump. You have made it. If you have a comment, a question about the things we've talked about, or anything at all actually, get in touch with us. The email is americastbc.co.uk UK the WhatsApp is 033-01-239480. We answer your questions every single week actually on the podcast, so keep them coming. You can join the online community as well on Discord. The link is in the podcast description on your app. We will be back with another podcast very soon, so until then, see you all later. By.
- [21:08]
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