
Officials from three countries, the US, Qatar, and Israel, credit the involvement of US President-elect Donald Trump for giving the final push needed to achieve the hostage and ceasefire deal that was announced last night (Wednesday), Axios reported.
According to the report, the coordination between the outgoing Biden Administration and the incoming Trump Administration was the factor that created the conditions in which the deal could be reached.
The hostage and ceasefire deal is based on an outline that was presented by the Biden Administration in May 2024, but Hamas refused all ceasefire offers until now. An American official told Axios that Trump's involvement "was the 10 cents missing for the dollar" that made the deal possible.
Other officials said that Israel and Hamas were more motivated to make a deal that was being pushed for by the incoming administration they will have to deal with for the next four years as opposed to the outgoing administration.
In early December 2024, Trump became personally involved in the issue of the hostages held in Gaza when he threatened that there would be "all hell to pay" if the hostages are not freed by the time of his inauguration on January 20 next week.
Trump has repeated that threat multiple times in the weeks since.
The ceasefire deal announced yesterday features three stages. In the first stage, Hamas will release 33 out of 98 hostages over the course of six weeks in exchange for the release of about 1,000 terrorists from Israeli prisons, including hundreds of murderers. Negotiations on the details of the second stage are supposed to take place during the first stage. If all three stages take place, all of the hostages will be released and the IDF will completely withdraw from the Gaza Strip.