🔗 Share this article

At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar appeared like another escalation that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

This strike on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a agreement, announced by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

That represents a objective that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

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

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world appear to have contributed in this success.

However, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

The president often states that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump ordered American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of support may have allowed Trump the room to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, even hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

His administration's "bear hug strategy" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's military actions in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, while his successor's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

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

Trump had given Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. He lent American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

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

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and a number of Arab nations, including the Emirates, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, Trump sat close as Netanyahu personally phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them convince the group to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he seems to do with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the war, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal