Extract from ABC News
Analysis
The Israeli Knesset greeted Donald Trump with a standing ovation.
It was a day of high human emotion and high political spectacle.
Finally, after 738 days, Israeli hostages who had been kept in horrendous conditions in Gaza were coming home to their families, as part of a ceasefire deal that sees the hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners and a partial pullback of Israeli forces.
And, at least for now, Israel had stopped its indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza, which has left more than 67,000 people dead, thousands more injured and a population of more than 2 million starving, traumatised and displaced.
Riding on the back of these profound human events was the political theatre of US President Donald Trump arriving in the Middle East in what commentators in both the US and the Middle East described as a victory lap.
Little wonder. Trump has been hailed as a hero by the public in Israel for getting the hostages out, even as the animosity towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued.
And the US president has been lauded around the world for getting a deal struck.
He was invited to address the Israeli parliament — the Knesset — before travelling on to Egypt to oversee the signing of a "Middle East peace plan" at a "peace summit" he will co-chair with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, attended by leaders from 20 countries around the region and Europe.
The timing of the release of the hostages — which was delayed from the original proposal — seemed conveniently close to the arrival of the US leader in Tel Aviv.
US Vice-President JD Vance even said Trump planned to welcome the hostages in person: the ultimate photo opportunity.
So much of the coverage of what has been happening — like almost global stories these days — have focused on Trump, his role in the deal and his big … personality.
Trump's unconventional and often haphazard approach to diplomacy means there are countless questions about what has driven the US president to date, and what might determine whether he stays engaged in the Middle East peace process in the future.
For example, if he was galvanised overwhelmingly by the question of getting hostages released, he may lose interest from here on in, and as a result, the process may lose momentum.
If it has been the fact that Israel's actions were increasingly threatening his ambitions to build close ties with the Gulf states, it will produce different outcomes.
Or, if it was his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize that motivated him — as some commentators have questioned — that has other implications too.
What has driven him until now is crucial to trying to work out what will drive him in the future.
Trump's changed approach to Gaza
There are some jarring aspects to the political spectacle part of the events we witnessed yesterday.
One is that the "Twenty Point Peace Plan" has been only partially endorsed by the warring parties involved, with clear details yet to be nutted out of if and how it will be implemented.
It's a construct that's been negotiated by other players, and on which Israel and Hamas have only agreed some immediate issues.
What is more, what Netanyahu said about the deal when standing beside Trump at the White House — and what he said subsequently in Hebrew — were significantly different.
As Al Jazeera reported at the time, Netanyahu had pledged to accept the plan when standing next to Trump at the White House.
"But a few hours later — and this time speaking in Hebrew rather than English — Netanyahu couched that agreement, telling his domestic audience that he definitely had not agreed to a Palestinian state and the Israeli military would remain in most of Gaza," Al Jazeera wrote.
This reflects the considerable credibility problem Netanyahu has in these developments, no matter how much he appeared to succumb to Trump's will.
Also, some of the often-overlooked other players to the deal — the Gulf states who were crucial to pressuring Hamas to fold — felt that what was announced was significantly different to what they had been told by Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.
Donald Trump flew to Egypt to take part in discussions. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)
There are so many aspects of this deal that aren't just the matters of difficult negotiation — such as whether the Israel Defense Forces stay in some part of Gaza; whether Hamas will disarm; and how its influence can be neutered even if it is formally kept out of future government.
But it is not just about the future of Hamas. It's about what might be the alternative.
There is talk about an international security force. But the Americans, Europeans, and Gulf states all have their own reasons for not wanting to take part.
There have been two different dynamics that have led to the events of the past 24 hours: one related to Trump and one related to changing dynamics in the region.
It is certainly true that it was only Trump's belated move to pressure Israel that got Israel to agree to some form of deal.
That has been seminal.
It stands in stark contrast to his approach in the early days of 2025 when he spoke about making Gaza into "the Riviera of the Middle East" and shared an AI-created video of a luxury resort city titled "Trump Gaza", complete with massive golden statues of Trump and images of him and Netanyahu lying on sun lounges and sipping drinks.
Families of Israeli hostages prepare to be reunited with their loved ones. (Eric Tlozek)
Hamas under growing pressure
A significant change in regional politics in recent months arose from the pressure that has been brought to bear on Hamas by the decline in the military power of its backer Iran.
And in the past couple of weeks, there has also been the transformative new pressure applied from Qatar and Türkiye.
An Israeli strike against Hamas leaders in a residential neighbourhood of Qatar's capital, Doha — where they were staying by general agreement to negotiate a peace deal — galvanised both Donald Trump and the region in different ways.
Qatar may have been hosting Hamas leaders. But it is also a close US ally.
The perception that the United States had condoned, or at least allowed, the strike profoundly changed the way many Gulf states viewed the Trump administration, which has been striving to have a close relationship with the Gulf states.
So even as Hamas was becoming increasingly isolated and weakened, the connections between the US and allies in the region were under threat.
The strike against Qatar was also just one of seven strikes in other countries by Israel in the space of a week.
For decades, they had sought a security guarantee from the United States as a protection against Iran.
The strike in Qatar brought home to the region that, as one official put it, "now the only threat in the region is Israel. It's no longer a situation driven by Israel being surrounded by a hostile environment but of Israel being the hostile player."
Countries like Türkiye were contemplating the possibility that they, too, may face air strikes from Israel.
At a practical level, for example, one of the reasons given for why Qatar had not detected the incoming missiles was that they were US-built weaponry, which couldn't be detected by US-built defence systems in Qatar.
That alone has led Gulf states to urgently review their heavy dependence on US military hardware alone.
When these pressures all came to a head, the shift in attitudes to Hamas — and the pressure on the terrorist organisation — came fast.
From 'no' to succumbing to pressure
Trump met with Arab and Islamic states on September 23, during the United Nations General Assembly, and outlined the 20-point plan.
There was some scepticism about the plan from all those states because there was such little detail.
A week later, Trump was meeting with Netanyahu at the White House.
Trump claimed victory when the Israeli prime minister appeared to endorse the plan, even though it became clear he had not signed up to crucial parts of it and that the plan had been significantly altered to accommodate Netanyahu, to the chagrin of the Arab and Islamic states.
The modified deal was then put to Hamas leaders who initially said "no".
Yet just two days later they rolled over.
Reports from the Middle East say what changed was that Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye piled on the pressure, arguing to Hamas that holding hostages was now a liability — because it was a justification for Israel to continue its bombardment of Gaza — rather than a bargaining chip.
What was more, among other things, if Hamas didn't approve the plan, Qatar and Türkiye would no longer host the group's political leadership.
Hamas is a much-diminished organisation: much of its political, military and administrative leadership has been killed.
Analysts say it has been reduced to a series of individual cells though, as has become clear in the last couple of days, it has still enough resources to try to run security in the Gaza Strip after the IDF withdrew, and stage retribution attacks on those accused of collaborating with Israel.
There have been a range of other changes too: the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria; the smashing of Hezbollah in Lebanon, much of this attributable to Netanyahu's tough approach.
But it is also true that, as Joe Biden's secretary of state Antony Blinken said: "Israel long ago achieved its war aims of destroying Hamas's capacity to repeat October 7 and killing the leaders responsible — at great cost to Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. The Israeli people want the remaining hostages home and the war to end."
There is perhaps some irony in the fact that Hamas — one of the groups so hostile to the West — is now relying on protection, of sorts, from the US and other Western forces in the sense that they are having to rely on the US to ensure Israel sticks by its side of the deal.
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