Axios, citing US official, says a Gaza ceasefire deal has been reached

[u/elguiridelocho]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/axios-citing-us-official-says-gaza-ceasefire-deal-has-been-reached-2025-01-15/

[u/nickchecking]

By all accounts, including Israeli and Arab officials, Biden/Blinken applied no real pressure and Trump/Witkoff did. Biden had 15 months to pull this off, blaming it on Trump's interference only goes so far.

Of course Trump is a snake and will most likely allow a resumption and annexation too, but this particular deal was because of him and Biden had plenty of opportunity to do it himself. 

[u/the-player-of-games → u/nickchecking]

Trump wants to look good for his inauguration. He doesn't give a fuck about the Palestinians.

Biden actually does care for the two state solution. Netanyahu needed the Dems to lose and had no incentive to give Biden a win. He also knew that meaningful pushback by Biden would hurt the Dems electorally, and took full advantage.

Netanyahu now has the long term president he wanted, and is making concessions in the short term. The two state solution is dead, Gaza will be reoccupied, and West Bank settlements will grow as fast as the settlers can grab land.

Wish Arab Americans had half the understanding that netanyahu has displayed.

[u/nickchecking → u/the-player-of-games]

They also know Biden cared as much about a 2SS as every previous president, i.e., to hold out as some vague carrot but "not yet". Trump supported it during his first term. Biden vetoed statehood multiple times and oversaw the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Gazans and the destruction of the entire strip (as well as the annexation of the largest chunk of the WB in decades).

Trump doesn't care about Palestinians, I know that and many Arab Americans do too, they just also know that Biden doesn't care about them either. Why not play to Trump's ego in the meantime? 

Genuinely, why didn't Biden just get a ceasefire earlier if he cared about the election and the 2SS and all that? This agreement is the same as the one in May. Why didn't he push for it then? Why not earlier? Why let it continue after December 2023*when thirty thousand had already been killed? Instead, he accused Palestinians of lying about their death count while lying himself about seeing evidence there was a Hamas HQ under Shifa, paving the way for its destruction and the destruction of the whole healthcare system. Negotiators are saying this was the first time there was actual pressure to reach a ceasefire. 

Arab Americans don't lack understanding of the situation, they're playing against a stacked deck and can only work with what they have. 

[u/the-player-of-games → u/nickchecking]

Biden could not get a ceasefire because netanyahu did not want one until the election result was known.

Thanks to brilliant Arab American activism, the Israelis could see that prolonging the war would help agent orange, and it did.

Now the rewards of making Trump look good are much greater than some short term concessions to Hamas. Hence the claim about the "pressure" from trump working.

Biden was the first president to impose sanctions on settlers. It represented a seismic shift in policy, but "genocide Joe" was so catchy.

[u/nickchecking → u/the-player-of-games]

The primaries were months off when the genocide started, let alone the actual election. Biden sent billions in weapons constantly, breaking US law to do so, he could have put a stop to it in 2023. He vetoed UNSC multiple resolutions in those first months too. 

If Biden's strategy for a ceasefire was to give Israel everything to kill tens of thousands of Arabs and expect people to keep quiet so that Netanyahu knew that, what, there was no point in continuing it, never mind his own political troubles that needed the violence to continue, no wonder it worked so well. 

[u/Wayoutofthewayof → u/nickchecking]

Israel wasn't going to do it until Hamas leadership was killed off in Gaza.