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Did Trump make the Gaza ceasefire happen?

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16.10.2025
President Donald Trump speaks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport on October 13, 2025, in Tel Aviv, Israel. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is still new and fragile, but the arguments over who should get credit for it — or who should be blamed for it taking so long to achieve — are already heated.

Was recent pressure from President Donald Trump on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decisive? Or was it Trump’s support for Netanyahu’s resumption of the war earlier this year that mattered, because it forced Hamas to concede more?

Alternatively, has Hamas been completely willing to make a deal like this for a year or more — meaning Israel was the main holdout? Or did newly intense pressure on Hamas from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey in recent days spur the group into making new concessions?

Does the new ceasefire implicate President Joe Biden for not pushing Netanyahu hard enough? Or is the result functionally the same as the ceasefire reached in January while Biden was still in office — which would mean Israel’s resumption of the war in March, with Trump’s backing, wrecked that previous deal for no good reason?

All these dueling interpretations are floating around, pushed by people with different partisan, national, and ideological sympathies.

But if you look closely, there are some areas of overlap in these narratives — and some revealing discrepancies.

Both Hamas and Netanyahu shifted on key points

For two long years, intermittent ceasefire talks have failed (or have eventually fallen apart) due to the inability of Israel and Hamas to agree on the timing and substance of several issues. When would Israel withdraw troops and truly agree to end the war? When would Hamas return the hostages, and in return for which Palestinian prisoners held by Israel? What would a postwar Gaza look like — and would Hamas agree to disarm and relinquish power to others?

Netanyahu’s critics claim that he was the one who repeatedly rejected or sabotaged efforts to end the war. Hamas, they argue, has long been willing to........

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