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It looks like we’re closer to a Gaza ceasefire deal than ever before. There are still a lot of things that could go wrong at numerous steps along the way, but it’s something, which is more than we’ve seen for the last 15 months.

As Antiwar’s Dave Decamp has noted, both AP and CBS News are reporting that Hamas and Israel have agreed “in principle” to the terms of a ceasefire, set to be rolled out in multiple tentative phases the details of which have yet to be fully nailed down. According to AP, the current deal would allow Israel the option of resuming its onslaught after a 42-day pause rather than moving on to the second phase of peace deals.

So it’s very, very far from perfect. But it’s something.

Report: Israel and Hamas Agree ‘in Principle’ to Ceasefire and Hostage Deal
According to media reports, the deal on the table doesn't commit Israel to a permanent ceasefire
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Israel #Gaza #Palestinians #Hamas #GazaCeasefireNow https://t.co/61oAU5RrF9

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) January 14, 2025
Though Biden and the Democrats are of course trying to take credit for these developments, according to Israeli media this sudden rush of movement after 15 months of stasis has been the result of pressures and negotiations from the incoming Trump administration.

According to the Israeli outlet Haaretz, president-elect Trump’s middle east envoy Steven Witkoff called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Friday to tell him he was coming to Israel to discuss ceasefire negotiations. Netanyahu’s people tried to tell Witkoff that it was the middle of the Sabbath so any meeting would need to be postponed, but Witkoff replied that the Sabbath was of no interest to him and demanded the meeting anyway. Haaretz reports that Netanyahu’s aides were taken aback by the bluntness of Witkoff’s response.

According to a report from the Israeli outlet YNet, Trump was able to persuade Netanyahu to agree to the deal by assuring him that he could back out of it at any time, along with pledging to remove sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers and the Israeli spyware firm Pegasus. So it’s not as though Trump has taken a strong position against Israel; he’s just doing something instead of nothing.

The deal that’s in the works is reportedly almost the same as the one Hamas agreed to all the way back in May of last year, which Netanyahu sabotaged with the complicity of the Biden regime. Biden could have ended this nightmare back in May, or indeed at any time since it began in October 2023.

It's not a surprise to anyone honest or clear-eyed, but it will make left-liberals utterly confused and lost:

Israeli media and Netanyahu's closest allies are adamant that Trump forced them into a cease-fire deal for Gaza they didn't want, something Biden never even tried: https://t.co/Q7XgEk1330

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 14, 2025
Ever since the genocide in Gaza began it’s been an open question whether the Biden administration’s facilitation of the slaughter has just been standard US empire depravity, or an evil that would only have occurred under Biden. The fact that we’re now closer to a ceasefire than ever before, reportedly due to pressures exerted by Trump, suggests that the latter could be the case. It suggests that these 15 months of human butchery could only have occurred under a dementia-addled lifelong Zionist surrounded by Zionist puppeteers.

Trita Parsi wrote months ago that Biden’s completely unconditional facilitation of every Israeli demand is historically the exception rather than the norm under US presidencies. If Trump does in fact wind up presiding over a de-escalation in the genocidal atrocities in Gaza, this will have been officially confirmed. It will be a proven fact that a Biden presidency was the worst thing that could possibly have happened for the Palestinian people. That for 15 months a psychopathic apartheid state was essentially left unsupervised to do what it has always wanted to do to the Palestinians in ways it never could have under any other circumstances, resulting in unfathomable horrors we’ll still be learning details of for years to come.

I am still not sold on the idea that Trump will bring even a relative amount of peace to Gaza. I will need to see this reflected by the facts on the ground throughout his term. But if those facts prove what it seems they might prove, it means that Biden was an even bigger monster than anyone realized, and that anyone who supported his election was indisputably wrong to do so.

Just something to be aware of.

I have a novel hypothesis about President-elect Donald J. Blowhard. His job is to close down the most absurd efforts of the Empire -- the adventures that never had any chance of succeeding but successfully transformed our society from Cold War Triumph to functional bankruptcy. Trump will do his blowhard act and through pure strength, he will bring an end to these ridiculous campaigns that have already trashed our economy.

It will shock me even more than it would shock Caity, if Trump does anything actually good. He is a piece of shit, just not Hitler. Nor is he an enemy of the permanent government. Just another tool.