How the Biden and Trump teams worked together to get the Gaza ceasefire and hostages deal done

This combo image shows President Joe Biden, left, and President-elect Donald Trump, right. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, left; Alex Brandon, right)

WASHINGTON (CNN) — When Qatar’s prime minister emerged Wednesday to declare — at long last — that a ceasefire-for-hostage deal had been struck in Gaza, representatives for two American administrations were on hand in Doha to bask in the victory.

The cooperation between the two was “almost unprecedented,” a senior Biden administration official said after the deal was clinched, made possible by a rare intersection of interests between bitter rivals who both saw an opening following Trump’s victory.

Brett McGurk, the longtime Middle East negotiator for President Joe Biden, had been planted in the Qatari capital for weeks in the hopes of a final agreement. He was joined in recent days by President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, for the final push.

At points, McGurk and Witkoff divvied up meetings across the Middle East to push the deal across the line, including critical talks between Witkoff and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week that McGurk joined by phone. If McGurk was focused primarily on the parameters of the deal, Witkoff was on hand to emphasize Trump’s desire to see a deal finished by Inauguration Day.

After the agreement was announced, both the incoming and outgoing president took full credit, a sign the poisonous relationship between them endures.

Ultimately, however, the deal enables both Biden and Trump to claim victory. It notches a final bit of positive news for a president who is poised to leave office with the lowest approval rating of his term. And it bolsters the bonafides of a president-elect who vowed “all hell would break out” in Gaza if the hostages were not released before his second inauguration.

The reality of who is responsible for the deal is complex. Biden administration officials say momentum toward a deal began before the election, after a separate ceasefire was struck between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The contours of the final agreement with Hamas map closely with a proposal Biden first unveiled in May, but was unable to complete.

Speaking at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month, Witkoff said Biden’s team was the “tip of the spear” in the talks.

“No one has pride of authorship. We are totally outcome oriented. Let’s get them home,” Witkoff, a former real estate investor, said then.

Still, after the deal was struck, even Biden officials acknowledged the deadline of Trump’s entry into office was a motivating factor in finally finding success after months of failure. And Trump, who was monitoring developments from Florida, was quick to declare the agreement was only made possible by his win.

“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November,” he wrote on social media.

Biden was more circumspect.

“It’s a very good afternoon,” Biden said Wednesday from the White House Cross Hall, steps from where members of the incoming Trump team were meeting with their Biden administration counterparts in the West Wing to discuss national security matters.

The president, who has decades of high-level foreign policy experience, described the talks that led to the ceasefire deal as “one of the toughest negotiations I’ve ever experienced.” He said his team had been “speaking as one” with Trump officials.

But asked as he was stepping away from the podium who deserves credit for Wednesday’s deal – himself or Trump – the president flashed his annoyance:

“Is that a joke?” he said before walking away.

Months of talks starting, stopping

By the final stretch of the 2024 presidential campaign, few inside the White House believed a hostage deal could be achieved before the results of the election were known.

American and European officials saw Netanyahu as biding his time, waiting to see which US president he’d be dealing with going forward – and keeping his options open for any outcome.

Hours of angry phone calls between the White House and Netanyahu’s office had yielded little progress, and even the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar did not immediately shake loose a deal.

Trump’s victory – widely seen inside the White House as Netanyahu’s preferred result – was hardly the outcome any Biden’s aides were hoping for. In their loss, though, some saw a fresh opportunity.

So during a post-election meeting with Trump in front of a roaring Oval Office fire, Biden had a request for the man who’d be replacing him in a few months: Work with the administration’s team to get the hostages out of Gaza.

In conversations between the incoming and outgoing national security teams, Biden’s aides made clear that whatever acrimony existed between the two men – and despite their friendly chat in the Oval Office, they remained bitterly opposed – the issue of the hostages was a place they must work together.

”We’re prepared to work with the incoming team in common cause on a bipartisan basis to do everything in our collective American power to secure the release of the hostages, both living and deceased,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the week after the November election.

A mutually beneficial agreement

In their fireside conversation, Biden and Trump came to an agreement that the hostage matter could and should be resolved before the hand-off of power on January 20, according to people who heard about the meeting afterward.

The timing suited both men.

Trump’s advisers have long felt that any agreement struck after his victory, but prior to him taking office, would enable him to take credit for it. It would also take the issue off his plate as he begins a second presidency squarely focused on fulfilling his campaign pledges on immigration, tariffs and dismantling Biden-era regulations.

For Biden, having finally secured the hostage deal he’s spent more than a quarter of his presidency trying to cement would validate time and energy – and political capital – lost to the cause.

And so, with both men’s blessing, the two opposing sides set to work on a final, last-week push to achieve what had for so long seemed impossible.

Late nights and final demands

A critical sticking point that had emerged over the past several months was Hamas’ refusal to acknowledge how many hostages it was still holding, or to identify which hostages it would release as part of the first phase of the deal, according to the senior administration official.

American officials made clear to Hamas through its intermediaries that no agreement could be realized without a full list of hostages that would be released as part of the deal.

The pressure appeared to work. By late December, Hamas had agreed to provide the list, accelerating talks to reach the final-stage negotiations toward a deal.

McGurk remained in the Middle East working toward completing the complex agreement, including finalizing details on the sequencing of how and when prisoners would be released.

Holed up inside a building in Doha, negotiators from the US, Israel, Qatar and Egypt, along with Hamas officials, talked until 3 a.m. as the sides attempted to finalize what had been a frustratingly elusive deal to end the conflict.

Hamas raised a number of last minute demands during the final negotiations. But the American and Israeli sides held firm as they pushed Hamas to agree.

Implementation of the deal could begin as early as Sunday, an official said.

As the reality of the deal sank in, Netanyahu got on the phone with his American counterparts. His first call was to Trump, to thank him and arrange a meeting in Washington. Next, he called Biden and “thanked him as well,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

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