Jan. 14: Trump Embraces Biden Ceasefire Deal

Greenland seeks cooperation with U.S.; The Hegseth hearing; Harvard hires MAGA lobbyists

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The Big Story

A cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas is “on the brink of finalization,” according to The Times of Israel (TOI). Tuesday saw contradictory reports as to whether Hamas had accepted the deal, but officials from Israel, the United States, Egypt, and Qatar all seem to believe that the talks are “at the final stages,” in the words of the Qatari foreign ministry. As we noted yesterday, negotiations were apparently advanced by Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who, according to reports in the Israeli press, bludgeoned Netanyahu into accepting the deal during a “tense” meeting in Jerusalem on Saturday. Haaretz reports that Bibi’s aides initially declined the meeting, saying the prime minister was observing the Sabbath, only for Witkoff to explain in “salty English” that “the Sabbath was of no interest to him.”

The deal appears to be a version of the deal proposed by Joe Biden in May, according to a draft obtained by the Associated Press, and would involve three stages:

1. The “gradual release” of 33 “humanitarian” hostages—“most” of whom are believed to be alive—in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners. This will include five female Israeli soldiers, who will each be traded for 50 Palestinian prisoners. This first stage will last 42 days and will see the IDF withdraw from Gaza’s population centers, allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza, and surge the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Israelis would also withdraw from the Netzarim Corridor, which divides northern from southern Gaza, but retain control of the Philadelphi Corridor (dividing Gaza from Egypt) during the first stage.

2. The second stage will be negotiated during the first stage and will involve the release of the remaining living captives, mostly male soldiers, for more Palestinian prisoners and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

3. The bodies of the remaining hostages will be returned in exchange for a “three-to-five-year reconstruction plan to be carried out in Gaza under international supervision.”

After all the drama of the past eight months, then, it would seem we’re back with the Team Obama-Biden plan, in which Hamas will not be releasing the hostages by inauguration day and Israel will be ceding de facto control of Gaza back to Hamas and then facilitating its “reconstruction.” To put the cherry on top, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that he expects the Palestinian Authority to regain a foothold in postwar Gaza, which will involve the PA “inviting international partners to help establish and run an interim administration responsible for running key civil sectors in Gaza such as banking, water, energy, health and civil coordination with Israel,” per TOI. Part of that administration, naturally, will be a U.S.-trained, -funded, and -equipped PA security force for Gaza—a version of the “PAF” mocked by Tablet’s Tony Badran in his essay on “The Ottoman American Empire.”

So what the hell is going on? And if it’s what it looks like, why would Trump—or Bibi—agree to it? To help understand these and other questions, we reached out to some of the sharpest minds in Tablet’s extended universe.

Scroll founder Jacob Siegel argued that Trump’s adoption of Biden’s “failed framework” could represent a retreat from the successful foreign policy vision that guided his first term, but that Bibi is no fool and likely has reasons for accepting the deal:

Trump has consistently signaled that he wanted the war wrapped up when he took office. There was only one way to accomplish that while also improving America’s strategic position: publicly back Israel while exerting maximum pressure on Hamas and its sponsors, Qatar and Iran. By doing so he could have strengthened a U.S. ally while weakening adversaries and imposing a penalty for the taking of American hostages. Instead, it now appears that he has adopted the failed framework that the Biden administration has pushed for the past year, pressuring Israel to accept a cease-fire that would keep Hamas in power in Gaza. This suggests that 1) the strong foreign policy instincts that guided Trump’s first term may have been corrupted by the anti-Israel revisionists in his inner circle, and 2) Israel has an existential imperative to lessen its dependence on the United States. It is too soon to say anything definitively on the first count. The second point about Israel’s need for greater independence is true regardless of Trump’s approach in office.

On the other hand, it is unlikely that Netanyahu would agree to any deal that he did not see serving his strategic objectives of neutralizing Iran and strengthening Israel’s territorial position. Netanyahu’s talents have never lay in designing clever policy frameworks and strategies, but in exploiting opportunities and working the seams of formal agreements to Israel’s advantage. Netanyahu likely believes that the deal—which appears on paper to be a straightforward loser for Israel—offers a means to returning hostages still held by Hamas while aligning the United States behind one or both of his core objectives.

Tablet’s geopolitical analyst, however, was considerably more pessimistic:

The question here isn’t why Bibi agreed to the deal. The answer to that question is obvious: He agreed because Donald Trump, the incoming president of the United States and the most powerful man on the planet, demanded it of him. After fighting a seven-front war for nearly a year and a half—not counting the war he has been fighting against his opponents in the Biden White House or the one against his foes at home—and achieving a number of large successes, Bibi can't keep fighting alone. He needs allies. And if Trump isn’t going to be his ally, then both Bibi and Israel are in pretty deep shit. There isn’t really a universe where Bibi can say no to Trump right now, and Trump and Bibi both know that. The best Bibi can hope for is therefore to say yes to whatever Trump asks and then work around the edges to carve out the best reality for Israel that he can in the midst of the chaos storm that will predictably follow.

The real question is why is this Trump’s ask? If Trump had a magic genie that came to grant him one wish from Israel’s prime minister, would it really be “make Bibi surrender to Hamas, so Joe Biden can snatch a final victory from the jaws of defeat?” Why not “give America new technology that allows us to defeat China in the semiconductor wars,” or “send a boatload of those exploding pagers to Putin’s inner circle,” or “conduct a risky campaign of industrial espionage that lets us get inside China’s major digital and electronic systems the way they are apparently getting inside ours” or “take out Iran’s nuclear program” or “help broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war so I can win the Nobel Prize.”

How did freeing the Nukhba Force terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7 atrocities become a U.S. foreign policy objective? Why is it Trump’s instinct to embed the United States deeper in the thankless morass of “rebuilding Gaza” under the aegis of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and whoever else Tony Blinken has lined up to build oceanfront palaces with state-of-the-art torture dungeons for the surviving members of the Sinwar clan? These are questions that deserve answers, since no one on planet Earth can reasonably imagine that effort is going to end well—especially after Israel is forced to withdraw its forces from the Philadelphi Corridor, which is the only true impediment to Hamas rebuilding its arsenal.

Sure, it’s possible that this deal is the prelude to a U.S.-backed Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities—or at least the credible threat of one, intended to force Iran to the table to negotiate JCPOA 2: The Art of the Deal. Given the rise of antisemitism in the United States over the past five years on both the left and the right, I fear that what we are looking at here may be something much uglier, though: the replacement of the pro-Israel leanings embodied by Jared and Ivanka during Trump’s first term with the “populist” antisemitism of Tucker Carlson and his allies, who use sectarian manipulation to promote “Deep State” policies like the Iran deal to the MAGA faithful. Antisemitism will also clearly have its uses as a means to deflect MAGA anger away from Trump-supporting oligarchs and companies who rely on China for markets and suppliers and India for workers. In an age of widening contradictions on the right, the Jews may well resume their traditional role as scapegoats.

Lee Smith is worried that (a) the deal could backfire on Trump and (b) that Witkoff’s connections to the Qataris made him ill-suited for the envoy role to begin with:

Let’s set aside strategy for a moment and talk about optics. Clearly the president-elect wants to start his term with a big win, but it seems to me this can go wrong in a thousand different ways. For instance, let’s say there are children who aren’t part of the first group of hostages released. That means they’re probably not alive. Obviously I don’t know the condition of anyone still in captivity; I’m just saying that if some of the most recognizable and most vulnerable hostages are dead, that’s one scenario in which the rumored deal doesn’t end up looking like a win. Trump can get pretty emotional when it comes to children. Remember—he wanted to kill Bashar al-Assad after he saw pictures of children the Syrian dictator gassed. So if it becomes clear that Hamas killed the children it was holding, it’s possible Trump himself won’t like the deal. And we already know another way in which this won’t look like a win: Trump said he wanted all of the hostages released by the time of his inauguration, but according to the details released, Hamas would be giving up only 33 hostages. Moreover, there will still be Americans held by Hamas, since one of the Americans, Edan Alexander, is in the IDF, and soldiers are not part of the first group to be freed. If the deal means that an American is still held by Hamas after Trump takes office, it’s going to be hard to message that as a win.

Sticking with the optics, let’s talk about Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. I wrote in Tablet about Obama’s Middle East envoy Martin Indyk about a decade ago. When Indyk was head of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, he accepted a nearly $15 million donation from Qatar. That sort of money is bound to influence any think tank’s research and analysis, but the more fundamental point was that as the Middle East envoy, Indyk was tasked to negotiate between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, both of which considered Qatar’s Palestinian client, Hamas, an adversary. How can the parties be expected to trust an interlocutor who has been paid by a third party that represents another client hostile to their interests? Obama aides and Indyk’s colleagues said it was absurd, and vicious, to suggest that Indyk was compromised by Doha’s money. I answered that it doesn’t matter whether his work will actually be influenced by the relationship between Qatar and the think tank he led and was certain to return to after his time in office. The issue is how it looks.

Same thing with Witkoff. He may turn out to be the greatest Middle East envoy ever, but the fact that he sold the Qataris a hotel for more than $600 million means he shouldn’t be in the same room with them on this issue. As I’ve written in Tablet, when it comes to hostage situations, Qatar’s motives and methods are dubious, at best. So, it puts a very bad spin on reports that Witkoff was not just involved, but allegedly strong-arming Netanyahu over the deal. Politics, especially foreign politics, is hardly a neat and tidy affair, but the core MAGA message is to prioritize American interests, protect our peace, and advance our prosperity. So, if the deal is meant to secure American interests, let someone else rough up a top American ally—if for no other reason than how it looks.

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The Rest

→The prime minister of Greenland said Monday that the Danish territory is seeking closer cooperation with the United States on mining and defense, Axios reports. Incoming president Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to acquire the Arctic territory, which is rich in largely undeveloped mineral resources including rare earths, graphite, copper, nickel, and zinc and is likely to assume growing importance for shipping if rising temperatures open up Arctic waterways. “We do not want to be Danes, and we do not want to be Americans,” Prime Minister Múte Egede said in a Monday press briefing, but he added that he was seeking “opportunities for cooperation” with Trump on mining trade. The prime minister of Denmark, which owns Greenland, said Monday that his team was entering into a “detailed dialogue” with the incoming administration to address U.S. “concerns about the security situation in the Arctic, which we share.” Among those concerns is that the Arctic is now the “weakest link in homeland defense,” as Jahara Matisek of the U.S. Naval War College told Radio Free Europe in a Monday article.

→The Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday held its first day of confirmation hearings for Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense. Hegseth performed well, if not spectacularly, and repeated his previous pledges to bring an emphasis on “lethality” and “meritocracy” back to the Pentagon. He also delivered some excellent lines, telling Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) that “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas,” promising Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) to reinstate all service members discharged for refusing the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate, and (our favorite) telling the committee that we “won World War II with seven 4-star generals; today we have 44.” Democrats, meanwhile, worked themselves into high dudgeon over Hegseth’s messy personal life, which has involved fanciful allegations of rape and credible allegations of noncriminal boozing and womanizing—behaviors that we’re sure are completely alien to the U.S. Senate. Former Democratic lobbyist Dan Turrentine, for one, was unimpressed:

→Quote of the Day:

“I feel liberated. We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled. … It’s a new dawn.”

That’s a quote from a “top banker” on Wall Street in a Financial Times article on whether corporate America is “going MAGA,” citing, as evidence of the trend, Amazon’s recent $40 million acquisition of the rights to a documentary about Melania Trump, the recent rush by major corporations to scrap their DEI policies, and a series of moves by Meta, including ending the use of third-party fact-checkers and adding Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to its board. But sometimes, as the above quote suggests, it’s the little things that matter to some people.

→Trump is also providing plenty of business opportunities for lobbyists like Ballard Partners, the former firm of Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles and attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, which was hired by Harvard University to lobby on “advocacy supporting education and educational research,” according to a report by Chuck Ross in The Washington Free Beacon. Harvard President Alan Garber, Ross notes, has been attempting to warn his asylum inmates faculty that the school will have to take a more “diplomatic” approach to Trump during his second term, reportedly warning faculty in a closed-door meeting in December that they will need to listen to public criticism with “empathy and humility” following the “anti-elite repudiation” of the November election. Presumably, Garber hopes that such “empathy and humility” will protect him from congressional antisemitism hearings and from policies such as a 2023 bill introduced to the Senate by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, which would have raised the tax rate on Harvard’s endowment from 1.4% to 35%. Garber has previously stated that such threats “keep me up at night.”

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