🔗 Share this article

Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar appeared like yet another intensification that drove the hope of peace further away.

The attack on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

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

That represents a objective that he, and Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

But if this deal holds, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that eluded Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this success.

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

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump moved the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader directed American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of backing may have given Trump the room to exert more influence on Israel behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Joe Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" argued that the US had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to influence the country's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took risked dividing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties 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 his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, Hezbollah to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, every one of 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 Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. He provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this regional tour but went to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader received consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, Trump was present close as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

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

Now Israel has committed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has resulted in the devastation of the territory and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal