🔗 Share this article

At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another escalation that pushed the hope of a ceasefire further away.

This strike on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an US partner and risked widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

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

This is a objective that he, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for nearly two years.

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

But if this agreement stands, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Biden and his administration.

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

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors involved beyond the control of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

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

The president likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called him as the country's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout 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 Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, Trump directed American aircraft to target the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given the president the room to apply more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, including bombing a Christian church, Trump pressured Netanyahu to change course.

The leader displayed a degree of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" argued that the US had to embrace the nation publicly in order to enable it to moderate the country's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to act.

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

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have told the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but went to the UAE, the kingdom 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 nearby as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the room to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he seems to do with some success."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in Israel than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

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

Hamas will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

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