🔗 Share this article

At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like another intensification that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

This strike on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

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

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

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

Yet if this deal stands, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that escaped Joe Biden and his administration.

The president's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this success.

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

In public, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by actions.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, the US leader ordered US bombers to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the room to exert more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" argued that the United States had to support the nation openly in order to allow it to influence the nation's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to act.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. However an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat nearby as Netanyahu himself called Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

If the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade the group to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he seems to handle with some success."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister himself was leverage that Trump employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now Israel has committed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will release all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the initial October 7 assault, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal