🔗 Share this article

At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas delegation in Qatar seemed like another escalation that pushed the hope of peace further away.

This strike on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

However, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, announced by Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

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

The president's unique style and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this success.

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

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been matched by actions.

During his initial time in office, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

When Israel began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, the US leader directed American aircraft to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in July, including hitting a place of worship, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" held that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took risked fracturing his own political backing, while his successor's solid Republican base gave him more room to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, during his term, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

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

Commercial Background Helped Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have told media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the president to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. He began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, according to an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit Israel on this regional tour but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, the president sat nearby as the prime minister himself called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them convince Hamas to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to handle with some success."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

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