🔗 Share this article

At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

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

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that escaped Joe Biden and his administration.

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

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

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

Trump often states that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the US embassy in the country from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against Iran in June, the US leader directed US bombers to target the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of support may have allowed Trump the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a Christian church, Trump pressured Netanyahu to change course.

Trump displayed a level 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 American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" held that the US had to embrace the nation publicly in order to enable it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. He lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. 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 administration figures have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. This year, he also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region in recent months helped change his thinking, says an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, Trump sat nearby as Netanyahu personally phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming the president's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and helped them convince Hamas to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he seems to do relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu personally was leverage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.

Now Israel has committed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

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

An end to the war, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal