The Way Donald Trump Secured a Gaza Strip Major Step That Escaped Biden

Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha seemed like another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

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

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

But if this deal holds, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

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

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by actions.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the US embassy in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under global norms.

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

These public demonstrations of backing may have allowed the president the leeway to apply more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. As per sources, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in July, even bombing a Christian church, Trump urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president 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 strained.

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

Underneath 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. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's solid Republican base provided him more room to act.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. He provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue completely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. He began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, he also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, 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 sat nearby as the prime minister personally phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the ability to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

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

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that many previous presidents have faced, and he seems to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister himself was leverage that Trump employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has committed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has resulted in the devastation of the territory and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal