STEPHEN POLLARD: Gaza ceasefire deal a victory for Trump, not Biden

At last, it seems, the hostages are going home. Or rather, some of them.

The majority have been killed in captivity, and the deal between Israel and Hamas does not mean the immediate release of all those who are still alive.

All previous prospective deals have collapsed because, when push came to shove, Hamas refused to release the hostages and Israel would not agree to Hamas’ demand that its troops leave the Philadelphi Corridor – an eight-mile strip of land along the border between Gaza and Egypt which has been used by Hamas to smuggle weapons.

This time, however, it seems both Hamas and Israel have moved.

And the obvious question is: “Why now?”

The answer is straightforward: Donald Trump.

The deal should be seen not as the final hurrah of the Biden administration but, rather, as the first foreign policy success of Mr Trump’s second term.

Even though he doesn’t take office until Monday, the very fact that he is about to become president again has already upended the dynamics not just in Gaza but across the Middle East.

The default position of so many is to look at Mr Trump and sneer. He is uncouth, unabashed and often unreliable.

But as we saw in his first term as president, it is those very characteristics that give him an impact denied to the smooth, respectable and – all too often – wrong-headed foreign policy establishment.

Put simply, Mr Trump gets that the single most important factor in succeeding in the Middle East is showing strength and being seen to mean it.

Both Hamas and Israel are well aware that on Monday, when Mr Trump is inaugurated, everything changes.

Last week, for example, he threatened Hamas that “all hell will break out” if it does not release the remaining hostages before then.

Last month he said there would be “hell to pay”.

Hamas know he means what he says, unlike the weak, vacillating Joe Biden.

For months the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has been trying to secure a ceasefire deal involving the release of the hostages.

He got nowhere, because all he has done is ask politely.

Worse, he made it less likely there would be a deal by repeatedly criticising Israel’s tactics in Gaza, such as last March when he and Mr Biden told Israel not to enter Rafah, and then said unless Israel changed course it might lose US support.

Hamas smelled weakness and US pressure being put on Israel, so the prospect of a deal receded.

As the former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put it when he left office in 2006: “Weakness is provocative. Time and again, weakness has invited adventures that strength might well have deterred”.

Crucially, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, trusts Mr Trump to have Israel’s back.

In his first term, Mr Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a hugely symbolic and supportive act, and he was tougher on Iran – by far the biggest national security threat to Israel – than any previous US president.

Mr Netanyahu also knows that it would be foolhardy to ignore the incoming president’s wishes.

And Mr Trump made clear that he wanted a deal, not least by sending his incoming Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to make sure that Mr Netanyahu was on board.

Mr Trump’s first term showed the Middle East he was prepared to throw his weight around.

He inherited Barack Obama’s flagship nuclear deal with the Iranian regime – a terrible treaty that allowed the coffers from its oil sales to flood back into the Iranian war chest, which it used to step up not only its nuclear programme but also its funding of its terrorist proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Mr Trump was widely pilloried for saying he would rip up the deal, but he did just that, as well as reimposing sanctions on Iran’s oil sales.

The result was clear: Iran fast ran out of money for its terrorism support.

And because the US was seen as leading the diplomatic fight against the region’s pariah state, it paved the way for the unprecedented Abraham Accords which established friendly relations between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan, all of which had good reason to fear Iran.

All that good work was undone by Mr Biden and Mr Blinken, who from their first day in power set about securing another nuclear deal with Iran – and who relaxed the sanctions so that Iran has since been able to build up its terrorism funding.

Mr Trump’s approach extends beyond the Middle East.

It has, for example, long been obvious that NATO members do not spend anything like enough on defence.

But it was only when Mr Trump threatened, in his first term, to walk out of NATO, saying we should not expect a free ride at the US taxpayers’ expense, that members started to even think about spending more.

Now the need to spend more is even clearer, but, once again, it is only thanks to Mr Trump’s threats that there is a prospect of it happening.