President Joe Biden claimed credit for the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, but President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, reportedly headed up key negotiations last week.
After a press conference Wednesday, in which Biden praised his national security officials who failed for months to reach a deal, a reporter asked whether he or Trump deserved credit for reaching an agreement.
“Is that a joke?” Biden responded, walking away from reporters.
During the press conference, Biden credited “many peacemakers” with bringing about the deal, including outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Vice President Kamala Harris for reaching the agreement.
Only after Biden lauded his administration, following 15 months of failures to land a deal, did he note that his team had been recently coordinating with the incoming Trump administration.
“I’d also note this deal was developed and negotiated under my administration, but its terms will be implemented for the most part by the next administration. In these past few days, we’ve been speaking as one team,” he said.
In fact, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in an article titled “Analysis | Trump’s Mideast Envoy Forced Netanyahu to Accept a Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected” that Biden’s administration enabled Witkoff, who comes from the private sector as a real estate investor, to take the lead last week. Haaretz Political Correspondent Chaim Levinson reported on Monday:
A week before Trump’s inauguration, Jerusalem already sees a change in the rules of the game that has broken the deadlock in the hostage negotiations. Unusually, the outgoing Biden administration has let Witkoff lead the process, on the grounds that any obligations the United States undertakes will be incumbent on Trump, not on Biden.
Witkoff is a Jewish real estate investor and developer who is close to Trump. He doesn’t have the background of the kind of people who usually fill diplomatic roles. Witkoff isn’t a diplomat. He doesn’t talk like a diplomat, he has no interest in diplomatic manners and diplomatic protocols,” says a senior Israeli diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He’s a businessman who wants to reach a deal quickly and charges ahead unusually aggressively.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning independent journalist Glenn Greenwald, the host of System Update, underscored the glaring “coincidence” in the timing of the deal and that Israeli media are crediting Trump.
“Israeli media reports Israel accepted a peace deal because of Trump. The Israeli Right says blames Trump for it. Even anti-Trump outlets in the US (like the NYT) say Trump was a key factor,” Greenwald wrote in a post on X.
“Only Biden insists he got it done: a huge coincidence it never happened until Trump won,” he added.
Biden noted Wednesday that the deal is the one he put forth in May, which aligns with Haaretz’s reporting that Witkoff “forced Israel to accept a plan that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over the past half year.”
Trump announced the deal in a Truth Social post ahead of Biden’s press conference.
“We have a deal for the hostages in the Middle East. They will be released shortly. Thank you!” he wrote.
In a second post, he added that the “epic ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans and our Allies.”
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