🔗 Share this article

At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that pushed the hope of peace out of reach.

This strike on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

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

That represents a goal that he, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

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

But, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

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

Trump often states that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president moved the US embassy in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under global norms.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader directed American aircraft to target the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of backing may have allowed Trump the leeway to apply more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, Trump pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump displayed a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" held that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during his term, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the leader to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the leader heard repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president was present nearby as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's relationship with his counterpart gave him the room to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says an analyst 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 desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he seems to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu personally was an advantage that Trump used to his benefit, he adds.

Now Israel has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death 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