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

At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace out of reach.

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

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, announced by President Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

That represents a goal that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

But if this agreement stands, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that escaped Joe Biden and his administration.

The president's distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this success.

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play 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 better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under global norms.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of support may have allowed Trump the room to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in July, including bombing a Christian church, the US president urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a degree of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, 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 you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" held that the US had to support Israel publicly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took risked dividing his own political backing, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to act.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties 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, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude in the territory. He lent American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the president to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, the president was present nearby as the prime minister personally called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart gave him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he appears to do with some success."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that he used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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