My column today in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Trump deserves credit for this and there is a lesson for Democrats.

Special to the Post-Gazette

Oct 20, 2025

4:30 AM

The Gaza war has stopped for now, as Israel and Hamas negotiate the terms of a White House sponsored peace deal. The Israeli hostages, or their remains, have already been released.

If this peace plan works, all the credit should go to President Donald Trump. Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded for less.

But, why did this plan work?

Nothing new

There was nothing really new in it. Details aside, there is nothing in the plan that Israel could not have achieved a year ago — maybe even longer.

For most of the two-year war, proposals like this peace plan have been floated. President Joe Biden floated one before he left office.

Previous proposals foundered because of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence — widely shared by the public in Israel — that Hamas must be utterly defeated and removed from any future role in Gaza and that Gaza itself must be neutralized so that no attack like the one that occurred on Oct. 7, 2023 could ever be repeated.

That is the reason that Trump himself had speculated about the removal of the Palestinian population and some kind of permanent occupation of Gaza by Israel or others. In fact, at the very moment Trump proposed his peace plan, Israel was in the midst of its final assault on Gaza City to try to eliminate the remaining Hamas forces once and for all.

Essentially, Trump ordered Netanyahu to call off the attack and end the war far short of his goals. The only change in circumstances is that Netanyahu obeyed.

Can you imagine the reaction if Biden has issued the same order? Or Kamala Harris, if she had been elected?

The religious right would have come down on them like a hammer, insisting that Israel had been betrayed. Republicans in Congress would have held hearings all day long on the sell-out.

Most importantly, Netanyahu would have ignored Biden or Harris. He would have pointed out that the peace plan does not ensure Hamas’s eradication from Gaza, nor give Israel adequate assurance that threats from Gaza will not emerge in the future. Netanyahu would have insisted that Israel must ensure its own security.

The difference was Trump

In contrast, Trump’s plan has elicited not a word of criticism from religious figures or from Israel hawks in America. They are so deep in Trump’s pocket that they have swallowed any misgivings they may have.

There are several reasons that Netanyahu gave in to Trump. First, Israelis trust Trump as they do not trust any Democrat, or any other American political figure.

Second, Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in his first term. No other American president, Republican or Democrat, did that, even after promising to do so.

Third, Trump authorized the use of bunker-busting bombs that Israel believed were needed to destroy, or at least retard, Iran’s nuclear threat. No Democratic party president would have done that. Israelis take the Iranian threat much more seriously than do most Americans.

And there was one thing more. Whatever they threatened, Netanyahu could be reasonably sure that Biden or Harris would never actually cut Israel off from the military aid, defense coordination and diplomatic cover, without which Israel would be unsustainably vulnerable. Israel needs the U.S., but no Democratic president could get away with using that leverage in full.

Not so Trump. If Netanyahu had crossed him, there would have been immediate and serious consequences. U.N. sanctions would not be vetoed in the Security Council. Arms shipments would be stopped. Maybe even military cooperation would be interrupted. Trump means business.

It is ironic that so many supporters of Israel voted for Trump. Yes, with Trump’s election, Israel gained a strong ally. But that ally was one that Israel could not afford to ignore.

There is a lesson here for Democrats. Effective power requires a willingness to be ruthless.

President Barak Obama did not have that. In 2013, he drew a red line on the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, warning that such use would prompt a military response. But when that line was crossed, Obama essentially did nothing.

Trump himself has caved in on numerous occasions on various issues. He has gone back and forth on Ukraine and on tariffs. There is even a comic phrase for it — TACO: Trump always chickens out.

Netanyahu knew Trump would act

But Netanyahu knew that this was different. Even during the presidential campaign, Trump had expressed concerns about the bloodshed in Gaza. I’m sure the final attack on Gaza City worried him.

Further, the failed September Israeli air attack on Hamas officials in Doha, Qatar, while they were negotiating a peace deal, seriously embarrassed the administration. Trump has close ties to Qatar.

It is no coincidence that the same day Netanyahu endorsed the peace deal, he phoned Qatar to apologize for the attack — with Trump sitting nearby.

If Democrats expect to lead this country in the future, they will have to show a willingness to act resolutely in defense of American interests. That does not have to mean aggressive military action. But it does mean action when action is promised.

Bruce Ledewitz is professor of law emeritus at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University. He writes every other Monday. His previous article was “The bizarre rule that let the government shut down.”

First Published: October 20, 2025, 4:30 a.m.