🔗 Share this article

At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

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

That represents a objective that Trump, and President 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 negotiated.

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

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

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump directed American aircraft to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the room to apply more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's envoy, his representative, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israel attacked against Syrian forces in July, even hitting a place of worship, the US president pressured Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to embrace Israel openly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to end.

The US leader had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the president to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year helped 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 visited the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat nearby as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart gave him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump seems to do with some success."

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

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians held in its jails and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

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

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