🔗 Share this article

Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an US partner and risked expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a pivotal event that culminated in a agreement, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

That represents a goal that Trump, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

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

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

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have contributed in this success.

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

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his initial time in office, Trump relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under global norms.

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

Those public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the release of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, according to an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree 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 nation's military actions in private.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, while his successor's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. He provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, according to an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to the country on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, Trump sat close as Netanyahu himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

If Trump's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the room to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and helped them convince Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," says an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that many earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to do with some success."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was an advantage that he employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal