The Way Trump Achieved a Gaza Strip Breakthrough That Escaped Biden

Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha appeared like another intensification that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

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

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

However, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a agreement, announced by Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

This is a goal that Trump, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for almost 24 months.

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

Trump's distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship Which Biden Never Had

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump often states that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump ordered American aircraft to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have given the president the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israel attacked against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, Trump pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "bear hug strategy" held that the US had to support Israel openly in order to allow 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 deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's solid Republican base provided him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

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

Commercial Background Helped Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to issue an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to end.

The US leader had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. He provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where he received consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, Trump sat close as Netanyahu personally called Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart gave him the ability to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader gained 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. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump seems to do with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister personally was an advantage that Trump employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has agreed to freeing over a thousand detainees held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the war, which has led to the destruction of the territory and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal