How Donald Trump Secured a Gaza Strip Breakthrough Which Eluded Joe Biden

Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another escalation that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the territorial integrity of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

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

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

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

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

Trump's unique style and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this breakthrough.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

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

When Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in June, Trump ordered American aircraft to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the room to exert more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

When Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst 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."

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

His administration's "bear hug strategy" argued that the US had to support Israel openly in order to enable it to moderate the country's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took risked fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters gave 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, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to end.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. He provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have told 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 close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. This year, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, Trump sat nearby as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

If Trump's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

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

Now Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians held in its jails and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the war, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal