The Way Trump Secured a Gaza Strip Breakthrough Which Eluded Joe Biden

Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 violated the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

However, it turned out to be a pivotal event that culminated in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

This is a goal that Trump, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be negotiated.

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

The president's distinct approach and key alliances with Israel and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

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

The president likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader directed US bombers to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have given the president the room to apply more influence on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump displayed a degree of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was always more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" held that the United States had to support Israel publicly 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 deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room 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 weakened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

Trump had given Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. He provided US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have told the press that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. 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 received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, the president sat nearby as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump seems to do with some success."

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

Now the Israeli government has committed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will free all the captives still held, living and dead, captured in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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