Why Trump's Gaza Ceasefire Succeeded After Two Years of Failed Attempts
- Elon Gilad
- Oct 10
- 8 min read
On October 9, 2025, Israel and Hamas signed a comprehensive ceasefire agreement in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, ending two years of warfare that had resisted over a dozen previous diplomatic attempts. The signing came after Hamas responded to Trump's October 3 deadline with qualified acceptance, leading to three days of intensive negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States. The Israeli cabinet approved the deal 24-6. The agreement went into effect at 8:30 AM local time on October 10, bringing the first sustained pause in fighting since March 2025.
The deal includes the immediate release of all 48 remaining hostages, 26 of whom have been declared dead, within 72 hours, partial Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza, release of approximately 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 serving life sentences, and a massive surge in humanitarian aid. Yet the framework closely resembles proposals that failed repeatedly throughout 2024 and early 2025 – raising urgent questions about why this attempt succeeded where others collapsed. Analysts diverge sharply on the answer: some credit Trump’s aggressive personal diplomacy, others point to exhaustion after two years of devastating war, and still others emphasize how Israel’s September 9 strikes on Doha created unexpected leverage that transformed regional dynamics.
Pattern of failure: Why previous ceasefires collapsed
Between October 2023 and October 2025, every major ceasefire initiative collapsed on the same obstacle: Israel demanded only temporary pauses with verifiable Hamas demilitarization before any permanent cessation, while Hamas insisted on permanent ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal before releasing hostages or discussing disarmament. Only two brief truces succeeded – a seven-day ceasefire in November 2023 that ended when Israel resumed operations, and a 42-day pause in January 2025 that broke in March with surprise Israeli airstrikes on Khan Younis.
President Biden’s May 31, 2024, proposal, which analysts noted was substantially similar to Trump’s October plan, collapsed as both sides added conditions after initial discussions. Israel sought to maintain control of the Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt, citing continued smuggling threats and intelligence showing Hamas had used previous pauses to rebuild capabilities. Hamas maintained demands for permanent cessation before any hostage releases, positions that proved irreconcilable.
Israeli military analysts argued the corridor was essential to prevent weapons smuggling, pointing to intelligence showing Hamas had rebuilt capabilities during previous ceasefires. These security imperatives, while complicating diplomacy, reflected genuine concerns about Hamas’s military reconstitution.
Israeli leaders faced complex constraints. Israeli military and intelligence officials argued that previous pauses had allowed Hamas to regroup and rearm – lessons from the lead-up to October 7 that shaped Israel’s insistence on verifiable demilitarization before any permanent cessation. Negotiations in Paris stalled as Israel’s negotiators operated under strict mandates reflecting these coalition constraints and security requirements, according to the Center for International Policy analysis.
The July 2024 attempt illustrated the gridlock. Israel had four conditions reflecting security concerns: the ability to resume operations if Hamas violated terms, maintaining presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, security vetting for Gazans returning to northern areas, and prioritizing living hostages in the first release phase. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant argued that Israel could maintain security without the Philadelphi presence.
Netanyahu faced genuine dilemmas as coalition partners threatened to collapse the government if he compromised. Hostage families’ protests created pressure the nation could not ignore. These competing pressures shaped Israel’s negotiating posture throughout 2024 and early 2025. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller later acknowledged tensions in the process, with Biden publicly announcing the May proposal to generate momentum. By September 2024, Biden administration officials privately acknowledged they would not negotiate a ceasefire before leaving office.
This history established a pattern: both sides could outlast American diplomatic pressure through internal political constraints and security requirements – a lesson that shaped Trump’s later approach.
Doha strikes: The catalyst?
Israel’s September 9, 2025, airstrikes targeting Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, emerged as a decisive turning point. The attack killed three Hamas operatives, who Israel identified as those involved in the October 7 massacre planning and a Qatari security officer, enraging a key mediator that had suspended its role in November 2024. Multiple senior administration officials interviewed by CNN on October 10 described Trump's reaction: the president expressed fury that Israel had provided minimal warning of strikes on a key US partner's territory.
Rather than allowing the crisis to derail his peace push, Trump and envoy Steve Witkoff were determined to turn the disaster into leverage. The strikes unified Arab states in unprecedented ways – nearly 60 Muslim countries gathered in Doha to show solidarity with Qatar, and the eight foreign ministers who had endorsed Trump’s framework issued a joint statement condemning the attack. Trump demanded that Netanyahu issue a public apology to Qatar.
For Israel, the Doha strikes achieved their tactical military objective of eliminating Hamas operatives at some diplomatic costs. Together, these converging pressures transformed the crisis into a diplomatic opportunity that forced both parties toward compromise.
Trump’s transactional tactics broke through resistance
Trump’s approach differed fundamentally from Biden’s diplomatic method. Biden’s administration faced a Democratic Party base increasingly critical of Israel, limiting his ability to publicly support Israeli military operations while privately pushing for compromise. Trump faced no such constraints.
Where Biden emphasized empathy for Palestinian suffering and pressured Israel primarily through private channels, Trump adopted what CNN described as “willing his plan into reality” – repeatedly pushing forward while bypassing reservations. Per CNN interviews with five senior US officials, Trump, Witkoff, and Jared Kushner approached discussions with business transaction principles: identify what each side wants and maneuver to make it happen.
When Hamas responded to the 20-point plan on October 3 without fully endorsing all details, Trump publicly declared Hamas “ready for a lasting PEACE” and ordered Israel to halt bombardment.
When Arab leaders balked at the revised text on October 6, the White House released it anyway. Trump publicly threatened Hamas, pressured Netanyahu behind the scenes, and provided incentives to Qatar to resume its mediating role – all in an attempt to keep the ball rolling.
Dennis Ross, a veteran Israeli-Palestinian negotiator at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, emphasized that “what is different is the level of American commitment and the readiness of this president, President Trump, to apply leverage not just to Hamas but clearly to Bibi as well.” According to Axios reporting, Trump told Netanyahu directly, “Take it or leave it. And leave it means we walk away from you."
This tactical aggression marked a clear departure from Biden's approach – and set the stage for a debate over whether it was innovation or merely well-timed execution.
Exhaustion and achievement alter strategic calculations
Two years of grinding warfare fundamentally changed both parties’ cost-benefit assessments. By October 2025, over 67,000 Palestinians had been killed according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health authorities, which cannot be independently verified and does not differentiate between Hamas operatives and civilians. Hamas’s military capabilities were severely degraded.
For Israel, the two-year campaign had achieved significant military objectives: Hamas’s fighting force was reduced from an estimated 30,000 to fewer than 10,000 operatives, its tunnel network was substantially degraded, and its senior leadership was decimated. These battlefield successes created conditions where Israel could consider a ceasefire from a position of strength rather than under pressure – a crucial psychological shift for Israeli decision-makers.
Polls showed two-thirds of Israelis wanted the war to end, viewing core military objectives as largely accomplished. Hostage families organized sustained protests in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The military reality shifted decisively in early October: Israel’s ground offensive into Gaza City put extreme pressure on remaining Hamas capabilities, which were Hamas’s “last key source of leverage,” per CSIS analysis. Israeli security officials assessed that continued operations offered diminishing returns while increasing risks to hostages.
For Hamas, regional states pushed harder for a compromise as conditions became unbearable. Matthew Levitt at the Washington Institute noted that “for Hamas, anything that enables it to survive is considered an achievement at this point.” This convergence created what Natan Sachs at the Brookings Institution called a window that both sides could accept terms similar to May 2024.
The structural shift suggests that Israel’s military campaign – while costly – had created conditions where Hamas could no longer sustain resistance, while Israel had achieved sufficient battlefield success to accept a diplomatic transition.
Weighing the explanations: Leadership, timing, or structural necessity?
The new agreement differed minimally from Biden’s May 2024 draft; what changed is Washington’s demonstrated readiness to enforce consequences.
The Israeli perspective holds that previous deals failed not due to obstruction but because they lacked adequate security guarantees. Hamas had violated every previous ceasefire, using pauses to rearm and rebuild. October 7 itself occurred after years of relative quiet that Israel had interpreted as stability.
This history made Israeli leaders deeply skeptical of any framework that didn’t include robust verification, international enforcement, and Arab state guarantees – elements largely absent from Biden’s proposals but central to Trump’s framework. The inclusion of the International Stabilization Force, Arab state guarantors, and detailed demilitarization protocols addressed Israeli concerns that previous frameworks had ignored.
The Trump narrative emphasizes five elements: maintaining public support for Israel while pressuring Netanyahu; projecting decisive American power; focusing on transactional outcomes; leveraging deep business relationships with Qatar and Turkey; and Israel remaining close to its ally, Trump. Multiple Republican senators called for Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
The critical counter-narrative holds that Trump benefited from Biden’s groundwork. Progressive analysts noted that the Trump plan closely resembles the three-phase plan Biden outlined in April 2024, with Biden’s negotiator Brett McGurk collaborating with Witkoff on technical details. Nancy Okail at the Center for International Policy argued the deal’s acceptance “ironically shows how effective actual pressure can be” – implying that Biden's failure lay not in framework design but in insufficient coercive leverage or different political constraints.
A third explanation emphasizes structural determinism: military exhaustion, international isolation, domestic pressure for hostage release, Hamas’s degraded capabilities, and mounting Arab coordination created conditions where agreement became inevitable regardless of US presidential style. This view treats Trump’s role as catalytic rather than causal – accelerating dynamics that Israel’s military success had already set in motion.
Historical precedent offers limited guidance. Unlike the 1978 Camp David Accords, where Carter’s personal mediation bridged fundamental gaps between Sadat and Begin, or the 1993 Oslo process, where sustained back-channel negotiations built trust, the 2025 Gaza ceasefire emerged from military outcome and coercive pressure rather than relationship-building. Trump’s approach resembled hardball negotiation tactics more than traditional peace process diplomacy – a departure that worked in this instance but may prove difficult to replicate.
Wrap up
The October 2025 ceasefire represents the convergence of five factors: Trump’s hardball tactics and willingness to pressure all parties; unified Arab pressure on Hamas; Israel’s achievement of significant military objectives, creating conditions for transition; overwhelming domestic pressure in Israel for hostage release; and the Doha strikes crisis, creating unexpected leverage. No single factor was decisive; their convergence created conditions that previous rounds lacked.
Trump’s distinctive contribution was tactical execution rather than framework innovation. The deal closely resembled Biden’s May 2024 proposal; what differed were enforcement mechanisms, security guarantees that addressed Israeli concerns, and the timing, which coincided with Israel’s military success.
Yet phase one success guarantees nothing. The fundamental disagreements that complicated previous attempts – permanent versus conditional cessation, Hamas disarmament verification, governance arrangements, Israeli withdrawal conditions tied to security, Palestinian statehood pathways – remain unresolved; deferred to future negotiations. Whether this proves a historic breakthrough or a fragile pause will depend on whether the pressure and security conditions that achieved peace can sustain it when the Board of Peace convenes in Riyadh later this month.
Elon Gilad is an Israeli author, journalist, and linguist. His work focuses on uncovering the historical roots of contemporary issues, particularly in current affairs, Jewish history, and the Hebrew language. Gilad is the author of "The Secret History of Judaism." His analytical pieces draw on his diverse background to provide unique insights into today's complex issues, explaining current situations through the lens of historical development.