A moment of hope breaks the despair of the Gaza war – thanks to Donald Trump

It may not yet win him the Nobel Peace Prize he craves, but Donald Trump deserves praise for finally, belatedly forcing Israel to halt the killing in Gaza and for Hamas agreeing to hand over the remaining hostages.

Two years of devastating war have offered few bright moments, but this is one. A moment that brought Gazans and Israelis onto the streets in the early hours to cheer. A moment that dares one to dream, despite past failures, that Israeli bombs could stop raining down on Gaza, and the anguish of the hostage families is about to end.

If it took Richard Nixon to go to China, perhaps historians will argue that it took Trump – with all his flaws, quirks and questionable motives – to force a Gaza peace agreement. Personally invested in brokering an end to the war and receiving the credit for it, Trump has grown impatient with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s delaying tactics.

Aaron David Miller, a veteran of the Middle East peace process, said on Thursday that he had never seen a US president exert such influence over an Israeli counterpart on a matter of core interest for Israel. That’s no small thing.

Distrustful of Netanyahu and convinced he had not prioritised the return of their loved ones, the Israeli hostage families have for months focused on Trump as the key to unlocking a breakthrough deal. They were right.

At the same time, Trump has convinced Hamas that, unless it agrees to return all the remaining hostages, the US will back Israel in unleashing an even more ferocious assault on the group, including by taking control of Gaza City.

According to Trump, the deal will see all the remaining hostages, living and dead, released in exchange for the Israeli military withdrawing to an agreed-upon line. Twenty hostages are thought to be alive, with 28 deceased.

The crucial specifics of how the hostage exchange will work, and the Israeli withdrawal line, are unclear.

It is the same with details of the agreed release of the 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 1700 Gazans jailed by Israel during the war. It has yet to be revealed whether Hamas or Israel get to decide the names of the released prisoners.

Most closely watched will be whether Israel agrees to Hamas’ demand to release Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian leader who has been imprisoned since 2002 over his involvement in the Second Intifada.

Nicknamed the “Palestinian Nelson Mandela”, Barghouti has long been seen as a potentially unifying leader and plausible successor to the ageing and widely despised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Polling shows he is easily the most popular political figure among the Palestinian public, and his release could be a game-changer for the long-term peace process.

We’ve seen previous ceasefire agreements fall apart – most recently in March when Netanyahu resumed bombing Gaza rather than negotiate an end to the war. Trump let him get away with it then. This time, the president appears more determined to apply pressure and secure the peace.

Trump’s tough-guy persona, which often wilts in the face of strongmen like Vladimir Putin, appears to be holding with Netanyahu – for now. “He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine,” Trump told the Axios website, explaining how he had encouraged Netanyahu to agree to the deal. And he has form in following through. In June, Trump forced Netanyahu to call off planned Israeli strikes on Iran that threatened to destroy a ceasefire deal he had proudly brokered.

In another important difference from the previous ceasefires, crucial Arab countries like Qatar, Egypt and Jordan have rallied together to pressure Hamas to stop fighting and give up power in Gaza. The militant group is weary and depleted after two years of war.

This, of course, is only phase one of a planned potential peace deal. The agreement announced on Thursday makes no mention of the process for Hamas to lay down its arms or for Israel to hand over power to an international peacekeeping force. These issues will be even more difficult to resolve than the components of the first phase of the deal.

The Jenga tower of Trump’s 20-point peace plan will certainly wobble and could fall apart, propelling the war into its third year. But we could maybe, just maybe, be on the precipice of a historic breakthrough: the beginning of the end of the war. It is hard to imagine an achievement more worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, even if Trump is not the winner when this year’s award is announced on Friday.

Blind faith would be irrational, but so would despair. Hope can be a dangerous thing, especially in the Middle East, but an essential one too.

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