🔗 Share this article

At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas delegation in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that pushed the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

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

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

That represents a objective that he, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

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.

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

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this success.

But, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

Trump often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by actions.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved 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 position under global norms.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in June, Trump directed American aircraft to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given the president the room to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even hitting a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to change course.

The leader displayed a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Joe Biden's connection with the Israeli administration was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to enable it to influence the nation's military actions behind closed doors.

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

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader 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 attack on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have told the press that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom 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 sat close as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming Trump's relationship with his counterpart provided him the ability to pressure the government to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

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

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and he appears to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister himself was leverage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.

Now Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured during the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the war, which has led to the destruction of the territory and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal