Now let's praise Donald Trump. It’s hard not to choke on this statement. But it was his rant - in which he demanded that Hamas release the remaining hostages before taking office or "hell will break out" - that actually brought about a ceasefire and the beginning of the end of the war in Gaza.

While honesty requires credit for Trump, his success is not the product of magical forces, nor is it an indictment of the Biden administration’s diplomacy. Trump's harsh threats injected a sense of urgency into the troubled negotiations. By allowing his special envoy, Steven Witkoff, to coordinate with the Biden administration, the incoming president has left Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a strong sense of isolation.

Over the course of Netanyahu's long rule, he transformed the country's foreign policy. For much of its history, the Jewish state enjoyed bipartisan support in the United States. Netanyahu has destroyed this tradition. He has boosted his reputation among his right-wing base by picking spats with Democratic presidents for his own domestic purposes. At the same time, he associated himself with the Republican Party.

As the war in Gaza began to twist and turn, and it became clear that Israel would never achieve the "total victory" he had promised, Netanyahu returned to his old ways. In a video he posted last June, he accused Biden of refusing to provide Israel with the ammunition it needed to win the war. This allegation is arguably defamatory given the amount of money the United States has spent arming Israel.

While this strategy boosted his career, it had one glaring flaw. Because of Netanyahu's lockstep partnership with the Republicans, he is subject to the whims of the party's leaders. Once Trump stressed his desire to end the war, Netanyahu was in trouble. Opposing the incoming president risks losing the most important pillar of Israel’s foreign support.

READ: Trump brokers ceasefire in Gaza

Some U.S. observers believe Netanyahu hopes to extend the war into Trump's term, during which he will have the Republican president's permission to do whatever he wants. After all, they are like-minded politicians. But that assessment misreads Netanyahu’s dynamic with Trump.

Netanyahu has clearly had reason to feel insecure about his relationship with Trump over the past four years. Trump was reportedly disgusted that Netanyahu called Joe Biden to congratulate him on winning the 2020 presidential election. By acknowledging Biden’s victory, Netanyahu failed a basic Trumpist loyalty test. (While Trump was outraged by the incident Axios(Barak Ravid, he declared, “Fuck him.”) After October 7, Trump accused the Israeli prime minister of failing to foresee the attack. Given that history, and all the anxiety it was sure to spark, Netanyahu was eager to contribute to Trump just days before his inauguration and at the height of his popularity.

After months of diplomatic futility, Biden shrewdly allowed Trump and Witkoff to take center stage in the talks. In his final days in office, rather than clinging to the presidency or quoting the cliché "there's only one president at a time," he invited his successors to join a temporary coalition in which they operated in sync, sharing the same strategy and exert joint pressure. This moment will be seen as an atavistic flourish of bipartisan foreign policy, but it also reminds me of Antony Blinken’s eyes.

When I traveled to the Middle East with the Secretary of State, the lights of the television cameras were pointed at his face, and I saw the hard work of shuttle diplomacy from the bulging bags under his eyes. For months, protesters camped outside his house in suburban Virginia. They threw red paint at his wife's car and he kept returning to the area in hopes of striking a deal. In fact, it was during these months of painful and dynamic negotiations that we arrived at the substance of the agreement, the nuts and bolts of peace. Hard work should be the center of the story, and maybe one day it will be, but right now it feels like a footnote.

On the left, many of Biden's critics are now cheering. Many of the haters of "Genocide Joe" always claim that Trump would be better for the Palestinian cause, or possibly just as bad, justifying the desire to punish Biden's Zionism through the election. Now, that strange faith in Trump will be tested as the diplomacy to come will be more difficult than ending the war. Hamas remains a fact of life in Gaza. Currently, the government is the one there and it has every incentive to keep the armed forces in place. Rebuilding the Las Vegas Strip and saving it from dangerous anarchy will require somehow getting around this fact. I question whether Trump cares deeply about Gaza’s future, or whether he has the patience to navigate the complexities of the situation. But if he did, I would be the first to praise him.