How Trump Achieved a Gaza Breakthrough Which Eluded Joe Biden

Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha seemed like another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened expanding the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

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

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be 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 the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump moved the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in the summer, Trump ordered American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have allowed the president the leeway to exert more influence on Israel in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of some hostages.

When Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump displayed a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" argued that the United States had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to issue an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had allowed Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, including the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, the president was present close as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman 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 desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu personally was leverage that he employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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