🔗 Share this article

At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another intensification that drove the prospect of peace out of reach.

The attack on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, announced by Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

That represents a goal that he, 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 Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

But if this deal stands, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also factors at play beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

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

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been matched by actions.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president moved the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump ordered American aircraft to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of support may have allowed Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even hitting a place of worship, the US president pressured Netanyahu to change course.

The leader displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to 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 the Israeli administration was consistently more tenuous.

His administration's "bear hug strategy" argued that the United States had to support Israel openly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's military actions in private.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. He lent US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have informed the press that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president was present nearby as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart gave him the room to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries 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 avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he appears to do with some success."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the war, which has led to the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal