How Donald Trump Secured a Gaza Major Step That Escaped Biden

Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha seemed like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

That represents a objective that he, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

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

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

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

The president likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by actions.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump moved the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, Trump directed US bombers to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the room to exert more influence on Israel in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, Trump pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

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

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took risked dividing his own political backing, while Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during his term, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. He provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the president to apply full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, Trump was present close as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

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

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

The group will release all the captives still held, 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 conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of the territory and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal