How Donald Trump Achieved a Gaza Strip Major Step Which Eluded Biden

At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha seemed like another escalation that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

However, it turned out to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

That represents a goal that Trump, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

Yet if this deal holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that escaped Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's unique style and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president moved the US embassy in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to target the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of backing may have given Trump the room to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the release of a number of captives.

When Israel attacked against Syria's military in July, including hitting a place of worship, Trump pressured Netanyahu to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

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

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took endangered dividing his own political backing, whereas his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Helped Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

Trump had allowed Israel a significant latitude in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to 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 conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat nearby as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the ability to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and assisted them persuade the group to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to do with some success."

The fact that the president is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu personally was leverage that he used to his benefit, he adds.

Currently Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, 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 led to the destruction of the territory and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal