🔗 Share this article

At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like another intensification that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, announced by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

That represents a objective that he, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be negotiated.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that escaped Joe Biden and his administration.

The president's distinct approach and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this success.

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors involved beyond the control of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these warm words have been matched by actions.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader ordered American aircraft to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of backing may have given Trump the room to exert more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in July, including bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was always more tenuous.

His administration's "bear hug approach" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took endangered dividing his own political backing, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat nearby as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart gave him the room to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that many earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu personally was leverage that he used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now Israel has agreed to releasing over a thousand detainees held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the war, which has resulted in the devastation of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal