A Gaza ceasefire deal would be Trump’s win

If an agreement is finally reached, it will be thanks to the simple clarity of Donald Trump’s demand that it must happen, and now

Palestinians, wounded in an Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, receive treatment at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. In the five months since Netanyahu’s August rejection of a ceasefire over control of the 100 meter wide strip of land inside Gaza’s border with Egypt, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry estimates that 6,700 Palestinians, including an unknown number of Hamas fighters, lost their lives. Picture: AP

If Israel and Hamas reach a ceasefire deal for Gaza in the next few days, as is widely expected, US President-elect Donald Trump will get and deserve much of the credit.

It isn’t that he or his foreign policy team came up with a new solution. As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to highlight this week, the deal on offer appears to have changed very little since its last-minute rejection by Israel months ago.