We can only rejoice that, for now, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has halted. The killing has stopped. Food is being allowed in, easing the starvation. Palestinians forcibly displaced from their homes are returning to their cities, if not their homes, most of which Israel has pulverized. Yet celebration must be tempered by the gnawing reality that the conditions for a lasting peace are, in classic Middle East fashion, being kicked down the road for future resolution – if ever at all.

We may grimace in doing so, but Donald Trump deserves credit for finally ending the US government’s funding and arming of the genocide, and arm-twisting Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting his 20-point plan for Gaza. Yet that hardly happened in a vacuum. Had Joe Biden tried to implement the same plan, he undoubtedly would have been pilloried by the Republican party for not giving Netanyahu everything he wanted. But Trump owns today’s Republican party. Much as when Richard Nixon went to China, there was no one meaningfully to the right of Trump to challenge him.

Trump’s conversion from embracing the Israeli far right’s goal of ethnic cleansing of Gaza to accepting the right of Palestinian civilians to remain was probably driven by a remarkable shift in US attitudes toward Israel. Young Christian evangelicals, a core Maga constituency, had become sickened by Israel’s genocide, which was aimed at inducing the forced deportation that Trump had endorsed with his vision of a Gaza “Riviera”. Always concerned foremost with himself, Trump could see the political costs of the largely unqualified green light that he had given Netanyahu and his........

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