The “cease-fire now” crowd finally got its cease-fire, although not the way it hoped.

Israel and Hamas have agreed to stop the fighting in Gaza, while the terror group will release all Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

There’s always a chance the agreement falls apart. Still, it isn’t creating jubilation from all the people who have been braying for Israel to end the war. There are two reasons — one is that the deal is favorable for Israel, and the other is that the deal’s architect is a president of the United States whom the fiercest advocates of a cease-fire hate.

If it holds, the agreement is the biggest victory yet for Donald Trump’s hyperactive, transactional diplomacy.

A lifetime of maneuvering for advantage in the real estate and media worlds in New York City — searching for and using every ounce of leverage — was better preparation for high-level international diplomacy than if Trump had spent a lifetime on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Whereas “international opinion” believed we had to isolate and cut off Israel, Trump armed the Jewish state, bombed Iran, and squeezed Qatar to bring Hamas to heel — and it worked. The deal is a tribute to avoiding the well-worn ruts of Middle East diplomacy.

As for Israel, it needed to find a way out of a conflict that had become a PR disaster. Getting the hostages back is an important national goal, even if the exchange is lopsided (these swaps always are). Meanwhile, Israel will pull back to an agreed-upon line but still hold an estimated 53 percent of Gaza as a security buffer. Even if things eventually go south again, Israel has bought time by decimating Hamas and significantly diminishing the threats from Iran and Hezbollah.

It is certainly true that phase 2 of the deal, which is supposed to disarm Hamas and establish a technocratic Palestinian government in Gaza, will be much more difficult to pull off. If it were to come to fruition, though, it would be transformative for Israel’s security and for the lives of Gazans.

There will presumably be no speeches at Hollywood awards ceremonies crediting Trump for his peacemaking. Among other things, there’s too much cognitive dissonance in saying, “I think President Trump is a dangerous fascist — but appreciate how bound and determined he is to end conflicts around the world.”

Trump is a gonzo version of standard U.S. foreign policy.

All American presidents want to make peace in the Middle East, and all want, whether they say it or not, to win the Nobel Peace Prize. What’s different about Trump is his methods, and his openness about seeking a call from the Nobel committee.

A hallmark of his policymaking at its best is an unwillingness to take “no” for an answer, an unremitting sense of urgency, and a creativity that is considered unrealistic or reckless by conventional metrics. We saw it during his first term with his success securing the border, with the historic achievement of Operation Warp Speed, and with the Abraham Accords.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world,” George Bernard Shaw maintained; “the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

In this sense, Trump is usefully unreasonable. Everyone around the world needs to be a little afraid of him, while he is willing to talk to anyone or consider anything. His optimism can be misplaced (the Ukraine war was a tougher nut than he thought), and his highly personalized diplomacy can misfire (he got unnecessarily crosswise with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi), but he can also prove all his doubters wrong.

The Washington cliché is that there is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit. Trump shows, to the contrary, that sometimes there is no limit to the good you can do if you want all the credit.

© 2025 by King Features Syndicate