The Way Donald Trump Achieved a Gaza Strip Breakthrough Which Escaped Biden

At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas delegation in Qatar appeared like another intensification that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

This strike on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

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

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

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

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this success.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed US bombers to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of some hostages.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" held that the US had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to moderate the country's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took risked fracturing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to act.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the leader to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year 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 went to the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, Trump was present close as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - 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 reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader developed influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the war, which has resulted in the devastation of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal