It does not matter what happens next; President Trump really does deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. His achievement will stand whether renewed hostilities break out in Gaza, or Netanyahu joins Bono and Qatar’s Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to sing about peace onstage in Khan Younis. Compelling the release of all living hostages held by Hamas in return for a ceasefire and tolerable concessions is as close as one gets to a miracle in the business of diplomacy. Donald Trump, along with Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Marco Rubio, and their teams, deserve the world’s admiration.
Barely a week ago, Israel appeared trapped. It had three options in Gaza, each of them unattractive. It could level what was left of the place, probably causing the deaths of many of the remaining hostages, and finally defeat Hamas on the battlefield in a conventional sense while signing up for further isolation and endless trouble in whatever came next. It could attempt to wash its hands of Gaza somehow, the least likely choice, inasmuch as the presence of the hostages would perpetually deny Israel the freedom to move on. A third path, perhaps the worst, seemed the most probable: an endless rope-a-dope in which Hamas would dribble out limited concessions and groups of hostages here and there as it played for time.
The Trump administration’s demand that any agreement begin with the release of all remaining hostages seemed less an achievable goal than a (welcome) statement of moral clarity, telegraphing the guilt of Hamas while recognizing the justice of Israel’s ongoing Israeli military action. In contrast to the appalling decisions by leaders like Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron to recognize a Palestinian state as a de facto reward for October 7, the framing of Trump’s diplomatic push made clear that bad behavior would not be rewarded, but punished. But how was it going to work? Why would the remaining genocidal thugs leading Hamas in Gaza (not their pampered counterparts abroad, let alone their ultimate sponsors in places like Qatar) actually let all the hostages go? Why would they give up such extraordinary leverage, when the hostages remained a dagger lodged in the heart of Israel’s politics, tearing the country apart and provoking military action that was slowly isolating Jerusalem from much of the world? Despite the toll of war on Hamas itself, the suffering of ordinary Gazans had not only been a price Hamas considered worth paying but a feature of its strategy for two years already. What could change for year three?
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