🔗 Share this article

Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another intensification that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

However, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

This is a objective that he, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be negotiated.

Yet if this deal holds, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's distinct approach and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have contributed in this breakthrough.

But, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

In public, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against Iran in the summer, Trump directed US bombers to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in July, including hitting a Christian church, Trump pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to support Israel publicly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own political backing, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, led the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president lent US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have told the press that this was a turning point which galvanised the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to change his thinking, says an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump was present nearby as Netanyahu personally phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

If Trump's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in Israel than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that he employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has agreed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal