🔗 Share this article

At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Qatar seemed like another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

However, 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 Trump, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

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

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

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of either man.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

In public, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

When the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump ordered American aircraft to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the room to apply more influence on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, the US president urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was always more strained.

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" held that the US had to embrace Israel publicly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah 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 Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led the president to issue an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

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

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, he also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, the president sat close as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's alliance with his counterpart provided him the ability to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and helped them convince the group to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister personally was leverage that Trump used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will free all the captives still held, living and dead, taken in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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