The Way Trump Achieved a Gaza Strip Breakthrough That Eluded Joe Biden

Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar appeared like yet another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

This is a objective that Trump, and Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

Yet if this deal holds, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that eluded Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have contributed in this breakthrough.

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

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under international law.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, the US leader ordered American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those 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, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in July, even bombing a place of worship, Trump pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" argued that the US had to embrace Israel publicly in order to enable it to influence the nation's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for the state, 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 Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, led the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

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

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, says an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but went to the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, the president was present nearby as the prime minister himself called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

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 backing, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a problem that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister himself was leverage that he used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will release all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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