🔗 Share this article

At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas delegation in Qatar seemed like another escalation that drove the prospect of peace out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

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

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed US bombers to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed the president the leeway to apply more influence on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured Netanyahu to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's connection with the Israeli administration was consistently more tenuous.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the US had to support Israel publicly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered dividing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to act.

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during his term, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had given Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. He lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have told the press that this was a turning point which motivated the president to apply full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, the president sat nearby as the prime minister personally called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

If Trump's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister himself was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Now Israel has agreed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 assault, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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