🔗 Share this article

At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace out of reach.

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

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

But if this agreement stands, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this success.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Biden Never Had

Publicly, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as the country's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by actions.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission 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 view under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered American aircraft to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have allowed Trump the room to exert more influence on Israel in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, Trump pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump 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 American president literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was always more tenuous.

His administration's "close embrace strategy" held that the US had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to moderate the country'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 Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to act.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, 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 Israel a significant latitude in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, the president sat close as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming Trump's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has agreed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, living and dead, taken in the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal