🔗 Share this article

At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

However, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a agreement, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

That represents a goal that Trump, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

The president's distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

Trump often states that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these warm words have been backed up by actions.

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, Trump ordered American aircraft to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of support may have given the president the leeway to apply more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the release of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in July, including hitting a Christian church, Trump pressured Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "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.

His administration's "bear hug approach" held that the United States had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to influence the country's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, led Trump to issue an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to end.

The US leader had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have informed the press that this was a turning point which galvanised the leader to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, the president was present close as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump developed influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that many previous presidents have struggled with, and he seems to handle with some success."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his benefit, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has committed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal