US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that Israel and Hamas had reached a ceasefire and hostage deal that would end the fighting in Gaza and surge humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.
Palestinians burst into celebration across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday at news of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, with some shedding years of joy and others whistling, clapping and chanting “Allahu akbar [God is greatest]”.
US President Joe Biden’s Middle East record is likely to be remembered not so much for how conflicts ended on his watch but mainly for how they unfolded, seemingly beyond his ability to contain them, say analysts.
Biden announces Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal
US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that Israel and Hamas had reached a ceasefire and hostage deal that would end the fighting in Gaza and surge humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.
“I can announce a ceasefire and a hostage deal has been reached between Israel and Hamas,” said Biden at the White House. The deal was reached after 15 months of suffering, he said, and would be followed by a surge of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
“Fighting in Gaza will stop, and soon the hostages return home to their families,” said Biden.
In a separate statement, the White House quoted Biden as saying: “Today, after many months of intensive diplomacy by the United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire and hostage deal. This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much-needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity.”
The long-sought deal emerged at the end of an intense 96 hours of negotiations in Doha brokered by US, Egyptian and Qatari diplomats who persuaded Israel and Hamas finally to conclude the agreement.
A senior Biden administration official credited the presence of President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, as being critical to reaching the agreement announced on Wednesday after 15 months of war that devastated the Palestinian enclave and spread conflict across the Middle East.
Leading the US side was Biden’s Middle East envoy, Brett McGurk, who had been in the region since 5 January working closely on what the official called a “very complex arrangement”.
The agreement between Israel and Hamas got a big push across the finish line with Trump’s repeated warnings there would be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if hostages held by the militant group were not released before his 20 January inauguration, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The deal, after months of on-off negotiations, gained momentum after Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia agreed to a ceasefire in November, and negotiations reached a boiling point over the last 96 hours, said the administration official.
A central obstacle was Hamas’ refusal to acknowledge how many hostages it was holding or who among the hostages would be released in the first phase of the deal.
The hostages were among the group seized by Hamas during the militant group’s assault on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, when the gunmen also killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
“That was the main issue just before Christmas time and we kept the pressure on Hamas and made clear there would not be a deal under any circumstance unless Hamas produced and agreed with the full list of hostages that would come out in the deal,” said the US official.
At the end of December, Hamas agreed to the list of hostages, which accelerated the final phase toward reaching a deal to free hostages in exchange for the release of some Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, said the official.
McGurk, who was in the region leading the US team working to nail down the details, was later joined by Witkoff.
The main points included terms of the ceasefire, the sequencing of the release of hostages, the number of Palestinian prisoners Israel would release in exchange and future humanitarian aid to Gaza, said the official.
That phase of the negotiations became very intense.
Witkoff’s involvement with McGurk in the final phase of the talks was a “fruitful partnership between the two of them to help nail down some of the final arrangements and bring them to a conclusion”, said the official.
Witkoff, a real estate investor close to Trump, also visited Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a person briefed on the deal said Witkoff “was able to pressure Netanyahu into accepting the deal and moving quickly”.
The US now hopes implementation can begin as soon as Sunday, said the official.
The deal outlines a six-week initial ceasefire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian detainees held by Israel, a separate official briefed on the negotiations told Reuters.
The agreement also requires 600 truckloads of humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the ceasefire, said the official. Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza has killed more than 46,000 people, according to Gaza health ministry figures, with hundreds of thousands facing a severe humanitarian crisis.
Gazans shed tears of joy, disbelief at news of ceasefire deal
Palestinians burst into celebration across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday at news of the ceasefire, with some shedding years of joy and others whistling, clapping and chanting “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest).
“I am happy, yes, I am crying, but those are tears of joy,” said Ghada, a mother of five displaced from her home in Gaza City during the 15-month-old conflict.
“We are being reborn, with every hour of delay Israel conducted a new massacre, I hope it is all getting over now,” she told Reuters via a chat app from a shelter in Deir Al-Balah town in central Gaza.
Youths beat tambourines, blew horns and danced in the street in Khan Younis in the southern part of the enclave minutes after hearing news of the agreement struck in the Qatari capital, Doha.
For some, delight was mingled with sorrow.
Ahmed Dahman (25) said the first thing he would do when the deal goes into effect is to recover the body of his father, who was killed in an airstrike on the family’s house last year, and “give him a proper burial”.
“I feel a mixture of happiness because lives are being saved and blood is being stopped,” said Dahman, who like Ghada was displaced from Gaza City and lives in Deir al-Balah.
“But I am also worried about the post-war shock of what we will see in the streets, our destroyed homes, my father whose body is still under the rubble.”
Iman Al-Qouqa, who lives with her family in a nearby tent, was still in disbelief.
“This is a day of happiness, and sadness, a shock and joy, but certainly it is a day we all must cry and cry long because of what we all lost. We did not lose friends, relatives, and homes only, we lost our city, Israel sent us back in history because of its brutal war,” she told Reuters.
“It is time the world comes back into Gaza, focuses on Gaza, and rebuilds it,” said Qouqa.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 46,000 people, according to Gaza health ministry figures, and left the coastal enclave a wasteland, with many thousands living in makeshift shelters.
Biden to hand unfinished agenda to Trump for chaotic Middle East
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, described the Middle East in late September 2023 as “quieter” than it had been in two decades.
That assessment did not age well.
Just eight days later, Hamas launched a deadly surprise attack from Gaza into Israel, triggering a war that devastated the Palestinian enclave and spread turmoil across the region — a cascade of crises that has cast a cloud over Biden’s foreign policy legacy as he prepares to leave office on 20 January.
Even with Biden aides having played a major role in securing a Gaza ceasefire deal for Hamas’ release of hostages announced on Wednesday, Biden’s Middle East record is likely to be remembered not so much for how conflicts ended on his watch but mainly for how they unfolded, seemingly beyond his ability to contain them, say analysts.
This also means there will be plenty of unfinished business to hand over to Trump and his incoming administration.
Biden’s record on the world stage is likely to be heavily defined by his handling of the 15-month war in Gaza, part of what Trump and his fellow Republicans have seized on as a “world on fire” during the Democratic president’s tenure. They accuse Biden of weak resolve that encouraged foes to foment chaos throughout the region.
Biden’s allies contend that he has had to confront a set of Middle East challenges not of his making and has handled them skilfully, weakening Iran and its regional proxies while working to limit civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon.
But Biden’s steadfast support for Israel in a response that decimated Hamas but also killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza took a heavy toll on US international credibility. It also divided his Democratic Party, one of many factors in Vice-President Kamala Harris’ defeat by Trump in the November election.
“The upside is Biden came to Israel’s defence as a reliable ally,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to Democratic and Republican administrations. “The downside is he had little success constraining [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu in Gaza, and that’s done serious reputational damage to the US.”
The Gaza ceasefire plan hammered out in the final days of Biden’s term after months of on-off negotiations was based on proposals he announced in mid-2024 and required dogged persistence alongside Qatari and Egyptian mediators to get across the finish line.
But the last-minute diplomatic breakthrough in Doha was widely seen by regional players as more a result of Trump’s warnings that there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released by the time of his inauguration on Monday, a threat likened by a Middle East source close to the Gaza talks to a “sword” hanging over the negotiators.
Netanyahu’s Cabinet will vote on the agreement on Thursday, with a majority of ministers expected to approve it, an Israel government official told Reuters.
Though Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday laid out a proposal for post-war Gaza, it will be up to the Trump administration to ensure full implementation of the ceasefire plan and decide how much of a role to play in the “Day After”.
In his final year in office, Biden has been credited with forging an international coalition that helped shield Israel against Iranian missile attacks and for consenting to Israeli counterstrikes against Tehran’s air defences — though he had warned against hitting Iranian nuclear and oil sites.
Despite US calls for restraint in Lebanon, Israel last year dealt one blow after another against Hezbollah militants, often with little or no advance notice to Washington. That was seen as the main impetus for the Iran-backed Islamist group’s agreement to a US-backed ceasefire in November.
The Biden administration was then caught off guard by a lightning rebel offensive that toppled Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, another major Iranian ally, in early December. It has been scrambling since to persuade the new Islamist rulers to form an inclusive government and prevent an Islamic State resurgence, tasks that Trump will now inherit.
“The greatest feat is Biden didn’t get in the way of Israel, but he constantly counselled ‘don’t do this, don’t do that’,” said Elliott Abrams, who was Trump’s special envoy on Iran during his first term and now rates Biden’s Middle East record as “mediocre”.
“I don’t think he deserves much credit in Lebanon or Syria,” he added.
Biden, in his farewell foreign policy speech at the State Department on Monday, defended his approach, insisting that the US contributed significantly to Iran now being “weaker than it’s been in decades”.
Some experts have also commended him for helping avert an all-out regional war.
But Biden still leaves Trump with what most analysts see as his biggest Middle East challenge — an Iranian nuclear programme that has advanced over the past four years and could race toward developing a nuclear weapon if it decides to do so.
It was Trump’s decision to abandon the international nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 that critics say opened the way to its nuclear moves, and Blinken on Tuesday counted it as one of Biden’s successes that Tehran has been deterred from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
Once back in office, Trump will have to decide whether to pursue a new nuclear pact with Iran or give Netanyahu the green light to hit Iranian nuclear facilities.
“The decision on how to approach Iran ultimately will drive much of Trump’s decision-making related to the region as a whole,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former US deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East.
Trump will also have to respond to another Iran-aligned group, Yemen’s Houthis, who for more than a year have fired missiles at Red Sea shipping and toward Israel. Military action ordered by Biden and coordinated with US allies has failed to end the Houthi threat.
UK PM Starmer says Gaza ceasefire is ‘long overdue’
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday described the ceasefire deal ending the war in Gaza as “long overdue” and said focus should turn to humanitarian aid and securing a better longer term future in the region.
“After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, this is the long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for,” said Starmer in an emailed statement.
“For the innocent Palestinians whose homes turned into a war zone overnight and the many who have lost their lives, this ceasefire must allow for a huge surge in humanitarian aid, which is so desperately needed to end the suffering in Gaza.
“And then our attention must turn to how we secure a permanently better future for the Israeli and Palestinian people.”
Lack of security after Gaza truce could make aid surge difficult, says UN
A short-term surge of aid deliveries into Gaza after a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas will be difficult if the deal does not cover security arrangements in the enclave, said a senior UN official on Wednesday.
The ceasefire deal reached on Wednesday included a significant increase in humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, but it was unclear if any agreement would cover security arrangements.
“Security is not [the responsibility of] the humanitarians. And it’s a very chaotic environment. The risk is that with a vacuum it gets even more chaotic,” a senior UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. “Short of any arrangement, it will be very difficult to surge deliveries in the short term.”
“The UN is committed to delivering humanitarian assistance during the ceasefire, just as we were during the period of active hostilities,” said Eri Kaneko, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The ceasefire deal, according to an official briefed on talks, requires 600 truckloads of aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the initial six-week ceasefire, including 50 carrying fuel. Half of the 600 aid trucks would be delivered to Gaza’s north, where experts have warned famine is imminent. DM
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