Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Egede, looked like he was being chased by an angry musk ox.

“Mr. Prime Minister, have you spoken to President Trump yet?” I asked as he fled a lunchtime news conference on Tuesday in the capital city, Nuuk (population 20,000). Egede, who is 37, wore a green zip-up sweater, stared straight ahead, and was walking toward me. He said nothing.

“Prime Minister Múte Egede,” I tried again, using his full name this time, for some reason.

He remained … mute.

I made one more attempt—“Have you talked to President Trump?”—to no avail.

As he walked out the door, Egede looked flushed and somewhat stunned. The briefing room had been tense, crowded with about three dozen journalists, several from other countries. This is—I’m guessing here—two and a half dozen more journalists than typically show up at his press conferences.

“This is not usual for us,” said Pele Broberg, a member of the Greenlandic Parliament and an off-and-on Egede nemesis, who had come to enjoy the spectacle and watch Egede squirm.

The briefing had lasted about 30 minutes and consisted of Egede giving a canned statement and then taking eight or nine questions, all on the same topic.

“Do we have reason to be afraid?” one Greenlandic journalist asked.

“Of course, what has happened is very serious,” Egede replied in Greenlandic. He projected the grave aura of a leader trying to be reassuring in a time of crisis; his tone and language seemed better suited to a natural disaster than a geopolitical quandary.

“We have to have faith that we can get through this,” Egede said. His hands shook slightly as he sipped from a glass of water.

“In Greenland,” he said, “there is a lot of unrest.”

Extreme cold was predicted for Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., so I figured I’d decamp to somewhere warmer: Nuuk.

Temperatures in the icy capital were in the low 30s, or several degrees balmier than those in Washington. More to the point, this autonomous Danish territory—the world’s biggest non-continental island—has surfaced as a subject of diplomatic dispute.

Trump had first announced his interest in America buying the territory in 2019. At the time, the Danish prime minister promptly rebuffed the overture (she called it “absurd”), to which Trump responded predictably (he called her “nasty”). And then, after a few weeks, the episode melted away. That is, until Trump managed to get himself reelected and started piping up again about how he still coveted the place. Ever since then, his renewed designs on Greenland have become a source of global fascination. The furor grew earlier this month, when Trump, in response to a reporter’s question, refused to rule out using military force to resolve the matter.

“Greenland is in the center of the world,” Egede proclaimed a few days later in Copenhagen, perhaps overstating things but still offering a whiff of the heady sense of relevance that’s been sweeping through Official Nuuk.

I went to Greenland to watch this peculiar production unfold in this most unlikely of places. Another big objective was to meet Egede, the young and ambitious prime minister. Like many other minor global figures who become overnight attention magnets, Egede had seemed at first exhilarated by all the interest, then overwhelmed, and then regretful. Watching his recent public appearances from afar, I had noticed his demeanor sometimes shift from the burly confidence of a local wunderkind to the nervousness of someone fully aware that his actions were being observed closely, especially by Washington and Copenhagen.

[Anne Applebaum: Trump triggers a crisis in Denmark—and Europe]

“We are Greenlanders,” Egede often says, robotically, when asked—as he is constantly—about Trump’s continued focus on his country. “We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be Danish, either.”

Egede just wants to be left alone, is the impression he is leaving these days. I learned this before I set out for Nuuk, when I placed a few calls to his office in an attempt to watch Trump’s inaugural speech with the prime minister. He shouldn’t be that hard to track down, I figured, given that the total number of humans in Greenland, which is roughly three times the physical size of Texas, is 56,000—smaller than the population of Bethesda, Maryland.

“Can you call back tomorrow?” his communications aide, Andreas Poulsen, pleaded on the phone. “We are very busy right now. Thank you for understanding.”

I tried the next day.

“Can you call back tomorrow?” Poulsen said again. “We are very busy right now.”

I sensed a pattern.

“Hi, Andreas,” I said when Poulsen picked up again on the third day. (Clearly Greenland’s government offices need more robust call-screening protocols.) “Do you have a second to talk now?”

“Can you call back tomorrow?” he said again. “I am very busy right now.” Poor guy sounded more beleaguered with each call. I empathized.

“Well, I’m going to be on my way to Greenland tomorrow,” I finally said, “so I’ll be in the air.”

(Silence.)

“Andreas, are you there?”

It’s not easy being in Greenland. Especially in January: never-ending snow, frigid winds, and maybe five or six hours of daylight, if you’re lucky. Greenland is known as Kalaallit Nunaat in the native tongue, which roughly translates, fittingly enough, to “Land of the Greenlanders.” Residents of Nuuk account for about one-third of the national population, the great majority of whom are all or part Inuit.

Greenland is also not easy to get to, even though Nuuk is in fact closer to the East Coast of the United States than to Copenhagen. There are currently no direct flights from the U.S., though United Airlines says it will begin direct routes to Nuuk from Newark in June. The few flights currently available, via Reykjavik, are often canceled due to weather. Until a recent renovation of the Nuuk airport, flying to the capital had required a stop in Kangerlussuaq, a former U.S. air base to the north, and then switching to a smaller plane. The airport-modernization project has been a source of local pride in Nuuk and a godsend of convenience to its visitors (no more nightmare layovers in Kangerlussuaq!).

On the Thursday before the inauguration, I managed to get the last seat on an Icelandair flight from Washington, which miraculously went off without major complication. When I arrived in Nuuk, I found the people of the capital to be nothing but warm and welcoming, starting with my cab driver from the airport. When I mentioned I was from Washington, he asked if I was in town “because of this situation with Trump.” Correct, I said.

In the grand and feverish scheme of Trump’s early agenda, Greenland remains a remote curiosity next to his higher-profile priorities such as mass deportations, mass pardons, and trying to end birthright citizenship. But his ongoing fascination with the country can’t be dismissed as merely the frivolous object of one egoist’s manifest destiny. For a variety of strategic reasons—energy, trade, and national security, among others—Greenland has become a legitimately prized territory. Melting ice has made for better access to valuable mineral deposits and potential oil bounties, and easier trade passage through Arctic waterways. To varying degrees, both Moscow and Beijing have shown that they want in on Greenland. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

A Trump hat in Nuuk, Greenland  (Juliette Pavy / Hors Format)

Not surprisingly, this message has been received as something rotten in Denmark. The NATO ally has held sovereignty over Greenland for more than a century. (Greenland was a colony until 1953, when it became a territory of the Danish kingdom, though it gained home rule in 1979.) Although the Danes provide about $600 million in subsidies to the island each year—about half of Greenland’s annual budget—critics of its stewardship have said that Denmark lacks the will and resources to fully realize Greenland’s potential or protect it militarily. A strong majority of Greenlanders—68 percent—want independence from Denmark, according to a 2019 poll.

The degree to which Greenlanders would welcome closer ties to America, much less actually becoming a part of the United States, is unclear. For the most part, Trump’s proposal has been met with something at the junction of amused, flattered, and resistant to being associated with such a thundering and aggressive entity, as embodied by its president. These qualities, to say the least, run counter to the affable, happily innocuous, and slightly mysterious national image that Greenlanders have traditionally preferred.

[From the July/August 2024 issue: A wild plan to avert catastrophic sea-level rise]

If nothing else, Trump’s Greenland campaign has set off a blizzard of conspicuous attention from Copenhagen. Denmark recently increased its military spending on the island, stepped up its government services, and offered two new dog-sled patrol teams. In a truly magnanimous pander to Greenland from His Majesty, the Danish king even slapped a big new image of a polar bear onto the monarchy’s royal coat of arms.

“It’s a show for the Danes to try to reassure everybody else that they still have full control of Greenland,” said Broberg, the member of Parliament, who is a strong advocate for independence from Denmark.

I met him last Sunday, at a televised forum of Greenlandic political officials that was broadcast across Denmark and Greenland. The event, which included the prime minister, was held at a theater next to the Parliament building and drew a packed house of engaged students and professionals, similar to a suburban Manchester or Nashua town hall before the New Hampshire primary. The panelists included Greenlandic and Danish politicians debating the various permutations of “independence,” how realistic they would be, and the merits of Danish and U.S. proprietorship, if any.

“It’s a historic time that we live in,” an audience member named Niels-Olav Holst-Larsen, who moved to Nuuk from Denmark 18 months ago, told me. “Today was, I think, the biggest television-broadcasting event from Denmark in Greenland in a lot of years.”

Trump’s inaugural address the next day was shaping up to be another major television event in Greenland. “Don’t we all have to watch this speech?” Qupanuk Olsen, a candidate for Parliament who describes herself as “Greenland’s biggest influencer on social media,” told me.

I first encountered Olsen, who goes by “Q,” via a delightful YouTube video titled “How Do We Say ‘Hello’ in Greenlandic.” I resolved to find and meet her. This did not take long. Olsen told me that she considers Trump’s interest to be an “amazing” boon for her country, at least from a PR perspective. Spreading Greenland’s abundant charms, she said, is something of a life’s mission for her. “I’ve been working on showing the rest of the world what Greenland is really about.”

I asked Olsen whether she was hoping for an inaugural mention of Greenland. She paused for several seconds before declaring herself a yes. “If he doesn’t mention Greenland”—she turned strangely plaintive—“we’re just going to be forgotten again.”

I spent much of January 20 visiting members of the Greenlandic Parliament. Called Inatsisartut, or “those who make the law,” the Parliament consists of 31 members, who, from what I can tell, represent 31 nuanced flavors of pro-Greenlandic-independence. Egede, for instance, is a former member of Inatsisartut, where he represented the left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party, which supports independence. But as the nation’s chief executive now, he recognizes the pragmatic benefits of the status quo, which requires working closely with Denmark, especially given the recent uncertainty that Trump has introduced.

The low-slung parliamentary-office building felt a bit like a small college dorm. MPs wandered in and out of conference rooms, bantered in hallways, and shouted to one another across a courtyard. My first stop on my tour of Greenland’s greatest deliberative body was a meeting with Broberg. A member of the (also) pro-independence Naleraq party, he served for a while as foreign minister until his anti-Danish rhetoric began to wear thin in Copenhagen, as well as with key figures in Nuuk—notably, Egede.

Broberg told me he admires politicians who eschew niceties and jump right to the point. He appreciates this about Trump, whose pursuit of Greenland he says has been a blessing to the cause of independence. I noted the obvious contradiction here: that Trump’s desire to “buy” Greenland is by definition antithetical to independence. Broberg argued that existing laws and treaties would make it impossible for the U.S. to actually “own” Greenland. Still, Trump’s public zest for the country enhances its cachet, Broberg explained. It also brings the added benefit of freaking out Denmark, he said.

As he spoke, I noticed a bright-red baseball hat on a shelf. I pointed to it, wondering if it was a Trump hat. In fact, the cap was emblazoned with the words Great Greenland, which Broberg told me is a Greenlandic company that makes sealskin furs and jackets. He added that he is not a Trumper; he enjoys watching people react to the hat.

At the end of the interview, Qarsoq Høegh-Dam, a top official with the Naleraq party and an adviser to Olsen, popped in to say hello. Høegh-Dam is a gregarious politico, of a familiar sort you often find in insular government towns. He said he was trying to organize a “watch party” for Trump’s inauguration.

I noticed that he was wearing a massive claw on a necklace. A polar-bear nail, he told me. As I studied the menacing trinket—roughly the size of a small croissant broken in half—Høegh-Dam launched into an aside. “It’s an age-old debate,” he said—who would win a fight between a tiger and a polar bear? I told him I was just here to learn. “I’ve seen a tiger,” Høegh-Dam said. “I was surprised how small they were.” He told me his sister had once almost been eaten by a polar bear. “Nobody is for polar bears eating people,” Høegh-Dam said—a seemingly safe position, even within the blood sport of Greenlandic politics.

[Jonathan Chait: The intellectual rationalization for annexing Greenland]

This was all riveting, but I was late for a meeting with Aqqalu Jerimiassen, a conservative member of Parliament, who was waiting down the hall. I noticed a photo in Jerimiassen’s office of him wearing a Trump shirt and drinking a Guinness. He told me he belongs to “likely the most right-wing party in Greenland.” This does not mean he would call himself a Trump supporter (and, in fact, he told me a few days later that he had taken down the Trump-shirt photo). If he lived in the U.S., he said, he would probably have voted for Nikki Haley.

Still, Jerimiassen appreciates the recognition Trump has brought to his country. “If someone asked me 10 years ago where I’m from, and I say Greenland—for example, if I’m in Europe, in Bulgaria—nobody knows where that is,” he said.

Before we finished, Jerimiassen detoured to a topic about which he becomes endlessly animated: how the Nuussuaq Peninsula, near where he is from, boasts the finest-tasting reindeer in all of Greenland. Up north, he said, the reindeer eat more moss, as opposed to grass, which makes for a more piquant cervine experience. “The smell. Aromatic. It’s very, very aromatic, and the savoriness,” he raved. And the reindeer in Nuuk?

“Very plain,” he opined.

Nuuk, Greenland (Juliette Pavy / Hors Format)

The inauguration watch party took place in a Naleraq meeting room near Broberg’s office. Broberg was there. So was Olsen, or “Q,” the influencer, along with a few parliamentary staffers, operatives, and assorted European broadcasters on hand to capture “the scene.” As with most watch parties, this “scene” was not much to watch: a bunch of people sitting around staring at a TV and sharing a communal bowl of Bugles, or whatever the Greenland equivalent of those crunchy cone-shaped snacks is.

“Greenland, Greenland, Greenland,” Broberg called out as the newly sworn-in Trump began speaking at the Capitol. I took this to mean that he wanted Trump to mention Greenland, but Broberg had told me earlier that he couldn’t care less. “We are getting all the attention that we need anyways,” he said.

Soon, the room turned quiet. Trump’s dark and aggressive tenor appeared to make the viewers uneasy. I watched Olsen, who kept fidgeting whenever it seemed Trump might name-check Greenland. This was something she was no longer wishing for, it appeared.

“Here it comes,” I heard one person say, when Trump started talking about changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and how the U.S. should retake control of the Panama Canal. But the president did not mention Greenland.

[Franklin Foer: Emperor Trump’s new map]

The speech still had a ways to go. Trump stated his goal “to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.” He declared that “the spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.” Olsen began nervously tapping her black boot on the floor. She grimaced. A few minutes later, the speech ended. No Greenland. Harpoon, dodged.

“Can you feel the sigh of relief in here?” Høegh-Dam remarked.

I asked Broberg what he thought of the speech. He chuckled and read aloud a text he’d just received.

“Greenland has a code name now,” he said. “Mars.”

Before I blew out of Nuuk, I figured I would make a final approach to Egede for an interview. His press conference on Tuesday felt like my best bet.

A pack of international journalists filed into the briefing room, like scavengers descending on a fresh caribou carcass. There were cursory checks of our press IDs, but no security checkpoints or metal detectors. The prime minister wandered in pretty much by himself, with no visible protective detail.

Egede, who has been Greenland’s prime minister since 2021, hewed closely to his scripted lines about how Greenland will decide its own future, and to a theme of national unity. “We are a small population, but togetherness is our strength,” he said via translation headphones issued to the press. He urged Greenlanders to stand firm, and said, “Together, we can get over this incident.”

[Eliot A. Cohen: Drop the outrage over Trump’s foreign-policy bluster]

As Egede’s news conference wore on, and the questions became more pointed, the prime minister looked a bit frozen. I noticed a guy in a black T-shirt standing behind a pane of glass, waving to get Egede’s attention. He looked familiar. I soon realized who it was: Andreas Poulsen, the PM’s snowed-under communications officer, whom I’d been harassing for days. He was trying to tell Egede to wrap things up.

I made a point of introducing myself to Poulsen, who stepped out from his glass booth. “I’m sorry I kept calling you last week,” I said. Not to worry, he replied. Nothing is normal in Nuuk these days. We chatted a bit, and then I shot my last shot.

“Would it be possible to interview the prime minister while I’m in Nuuk?”

“Not today, not today,” Poulsen said.

“How about tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re very busy.”

Postscript: I was supposed to leave Greenland on Wednesday, but my flight home got snowed out. I was stuck indefinitely. (Nuuk in January, man. Next year, I’ll bring my whole family.) As it happened, I had a phone interview scheduled for Thursday, related to another project: a conversation with, of all people, Paul McCartney.

“Greenland?” McCartney greeted me when he came on the phone. Apparently someone had told him about my situation.

Yeah, I seem to be stranded here, I told him.

“Trump’s gonna buy it,” Sir Paul said. “So don’t worry.”

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For weeks, Donald Trump has been exerting influence on events in the Middle East. After winning the 2024 election, he dispatched his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to the region to help the Biden administration get the Israel-Hamas cease-fire and hostage-release deal over the finish line. Now, a little more than 24 hours into his presidency, Trump has already begun to undo much of President Joe Biden’s decision making from the past four years, including on foreign affairs. I spoke with my colleague Yair Rosenberg, who covers both Trump and the Middle East, about the new president’s goals and approach to the region.

Isabel Fattal: What moves has Trump made on the Israeli-Palestinian front since taking office yesterday?

Yair Rosenberg: Shortly after inauguration, Trump rescinded Joe Biden’s February executive order that erected an entire sanctions regime against extremist Israeli settlers. This order allowed the administration to impose stiff penalties on violent settlers in the West Bank and anybody who supported them, and—as I reported in March—could have eventually applied not just to individual actors and organizations on the ground but also to members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the Israeli army.

Biden’s executive order was seen as a sword of Damocles hanging over the settler movement. It effectively cut off some important people on the Israeli hard right from the international financial system, because if you’re under U.S. sanctions, a lot of institutions cannot touch you. The settler movement was so concerned about this that they pressed Netanyahu to lobby against the sanctions in Washington, and some members even took the Biden administration to court in the United States. All of that now goes away: not just the sanctions, but the executive order that created the entire regime. Trump is also reportedly expected to end the U.S. freeze on 2,000-pound bombs that Biden put in place during the war in Gaza, and impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court over its attempted prosecution of Israeli officials—something Biden resisted.

Isabel: Trump told reporters last night that he is “not confident” that the Gaza cease-fire will last, adding that “it’s not our war; it’s their war.” How durable is the cease-fire deal right now?

Yair: Trump is right to be skeptical. It’s not at all clear whether this is actually going to hold. The first of the agreement’s three phases, which we are in right now, is 42 days long. Israel is releasing nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including convicted mass murderers, in exchange for 33 women, children, and elderly hostages in Gaza held by Hamas, some of them living, some of them dead. That part of the deal seems likely to continue according to plan.

But partway through this period, the two parties are supposed to negotiate for the release of the remaining male hostages, for whom Hamas is demanding a much steeper ransom than this already steep price. And if those negotiations don’t bear fruit, it’s entirely possible the war will resume, especially because hard-right politicians in Netanyahu’s government have already vowed to press on until Hamas is eliminated.

The question becomes: How committed are Israel and Hamas to actually getting this done? And how committed is Trump to keeping the cease-fire on the rails? From his comments, it doesn’t seem like he knows. He’s speaking like a spectator instead of an actor. So we have no idea what he intends to do.

Isabel: What would it look like for Trump to truly commit to keeping the cease-fire on track?

Yair: It would require his administration to make it more worthwhile for both sides to compromise and stick to the deal rather than capsize it. Most Israelis support the current deal, but the accord’s most bitter opponents are the hard-right politicians in the current Netanyahu government, making the cease-fire harder to sustain as time goes on. But the Israeli far right is also hoping to get many items on their wish list over the next four years, much like they did during Trump’s previous term. Among other things, they seek U.S. support for Israeli annexation of the West Bank, the removal of the sanctions we discussed, and backing for Israel in its ongoing war with Iran and its proxies. If Trump is committed to the continuation of the cease-fire—an open question—he could make clear that some of these benefits come with a price, which is calm in Gaza. And Trump, both in his previous term and in recent weeks, has shown that he is willing to offer incentives that Biden would not.

Hamas is even harder to influence, because they’re a messianic terrorist group. Fundamentally, they don’t seem to care about not just how many of their own fighters they’ve lost but also how many Gazan civilians have been killed in this war. For them, every casualty is either immaterial or an asset in a gruesome PR war against Israel. But they do have sponsors abroad—like Qatar, which hosts some of the group’s political leaders. The Qataris want to be on the right side of the next Trump administration, like any other state in the Middle East. And so Trump has the ability to put pressure on the Qataris, who can then push Hamas to compromise on what they’re willing to accept in the next hostage exchange.

These methods aren’t guaranteed to work. It’s true that the U.S. has some sway over events, but these countries and actors have their own national interests and make decisions based on their own internal politics. Americans on both the right and the left tend to overestimate the U.S.’s role in world developments. Frankly, if there were a magic button here, Biden would have pushed it already.

Isabel: What can we learn about Trump’s second term from how he has handled this cease-fire situation thus far? What does it tell us about how he might relate to the region?

Yair: The thing to understand about Trump’s approach to politics, as I’ve written, is that he has few if any core beliefs, which means that he is both incredibly flexible and easily influenced. Both domestic and international actors know that if they can give Trump something he wants, he might give them something they want. It doesn’t matter if they are a traditional U.S. ally or not. It doesn’t matter if they’re a democracy or not. It’s entirely about whether you are in his good books. So everybody is now scrambling to get on Trump’s good side, to make down payments on the things they hope the most powerful person in the world will then pay them back for. In a real sense, that’s what this cease-fire is—for Israel, for Qatar, for Egypt, it’s all jockeying for advantage by trying to give Trump a win now so he’ll give them a win later.

Expect the next four years to look a lot like this, with international actors such as Saudi Arabia and Israel and domestic actors such as American evangelicals and Republican neo-isolationists all playing this game of thrones, hoping to curry favor with the ruler now holding court.

Related:

How Trump made Biden’s Gaza peace plan happen Trump doesn’t believe anything. That’s why he wins.

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Trump’s pardons are sending a crystal-clear message. Did Elon Musk just do a Nazi salute? What everyone gets wrong about Tulsi Gabbard Donald Trump is the new language cop.

Today’s News

Attorneys general from 22 states sued to block Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to ban birthright citizenship. The former leader of the Proud Boys and the founder of the Oath Keepers have been released from prison after Trump signed an executive order yesterday that pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 January 6 defendants. Former President Joe Biden issued numerous preemptive pardons yesterday, including for members of his family, General Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, and members of the January 6 House select committee.

Dispatches

The Wonder Reader: Isabel Fattal explores Americans’ changing relationship with alcohol.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Underwood Archives / Getty

Please Don’t Make Me Say My Boyfriend’s Name

By Shayla Love

Dale Carnegie, the self-made titan of self-help, swore by the social power of names. Saying someone’s name, he wrote in How to Win Friends and Influence People, was like a magic spell, the key to closing deals, amassing political favors, and generally being likable … “If you don’t do this,” Dale Carnegie warned his readers, “you are headed for trouble.”

By Carnegie’s measure, plenty of people are in serious jeopardy. It’s not that they don’t remember what their friends and acquaintances are called; rather, saying names makes them feel anxious, nauseated, or simply awkward. In 2023, a group of psychologists dubbed this phenomenon alexinomia.

Read the full article.

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What Trump did to police officers Eliot A. Cohen: The U.S. needs soldiers, not warriors. Good on Paper: Maybe we do need DOGE. The tech oligarchy arrives. The Trump shift “Dear James”: My sad, sad friend talks only about herself.

Culture Break

Will Heath / NBC

Watch. The comedian Dave Chappelle took a break from punching down to deliver a timely and sincere message on Saturday Night Live (streaming on Peacock), Hannah Giorgis writes.

Scroll. TikTok went dark in the U.S. on Saturday night, only to be resurrected on Sunday. Steffi Cao details the chaotic moment for the most controversial app in America.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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Today, after 15 months of brutal war, Israel and Hamas agreed to a deal to secure the release of Israeli hostages and the cessation of hostilities in Gaza. The agreement’s first six weeks will see Israel withdraw from much of the enclave and release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including convicted mass murderers, in exchange for Hamas releasing 33 captive Israelis—some living, some dead. Should everything proceed according to plan, subsequent negotiations would assure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages and the reconstruction of Gaza in the deal’s second and third stages.

Given the precarious nature of the deal’s phased structure, the matter is far from settled, despite the headlines and handshakes. The accord must also still be ratified by the Israeli cabinet. If that happens, the ensuing weeks will be traumatic, as returning Gazan refugees discover whether their homes are still standing, and the families of Israel’s hostages discover whether their loved ones are still alive.

The tentative agreement is nonetheless a victory for the foreign-policy teams of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who worked in tandem with regional partners Qatar and Egypt to bring it about. The terms largely echo a proposal laid out by Biden himself in May 2024, but the incoming president dragged the parties over the finish line. What changed was not Washington’s general orientation toward the conflict. Far from turning up the heat on Israel, Trump telegraphed a further embrace of its positions during his 2024 campaign, repeatedly attacking Biden for restricting arms sales to Israel. But this posture may have helped deliver both sides: Hamas could reasonably surmise that it would not get a better deal during Trump’s presidency, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government likely acceded to the arrangement in order to stay in the new leader’s good graces as he assumed office.

[Eliot A. Cohen: Cancel the foreign-policy apocalypse]

The Israeli far right, whose lawmakers hold the margin of power in Netanyahu’s coalition, had previously threatened to collapse the government should a deal be reached without Hamas fully vanquished from Gaza. But amid Trump’s return, the radicals have their eyes on bigger prizes, such as the annexation of the West Bank—which the Palestinians claim for their future state—and are loath to forgo such opportunities. For this reason, they will likely vote against the cease-fire but leave Netanyahu in power, allowing him to enact it.

Put another way, it’s not that Trump had a stick with which to beat Israel that Biden didn’t have; it’s that his presidency holds out the prospect of carrots that Biden would never offer. It was less the president-elect’s pressure than his potential promise that brought the Israeli far right onside. With Trump, everything is a transaction, and for his would-be suitors—not just Israel, but also Hamas’s sponsors in Qatar—the Gaza cease-fire is a down payment.

[Samer Sinijlawi: My hope for Palestine]

On the Palestinian side, the deal marks a momentary if Pyrrhic triumph for an eviscerated Hamas, which will get to claim that it outlasted the Israeli army and parade some of the released prisoners through the streets of Gaza. But with its leaders killed and its territory devastated, the group will have little to celebrate or to show for its atrocities on October 7. The terrorist organization may continue to impose its will by force, but it is deeply unpopular in its own backyard, according to recent polls.

Meanwhile, with Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar dead, Lebanon’s Hezbollah decimated, Syria’s pro-Iran regime overthrown, and Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance shattered, Netanyahu has a plausible claim to victory, should the deal hold. And if it doesn’t, or should Hamas prove insufficiently forthcoming in negotiations over the remaining hostages, he has a new American president in office who may happily underwrite a return to hostilities.

The guns might mercifully fall silent for now, but if history is any indication, the long war between Israel and Hamas will continue, in one form or another.