The Way Donald Trump Secured a Gaza Major Step That Eluded Biden

Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Qatar appeared like another escalation that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

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

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

It is just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

The president's distinct approach and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have contributed in this success.

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of either man.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his initial time in office, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader ordered American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of backing may have allowed Trump the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including bombing a place of worship, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says 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."

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was always more tenuous.

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" argued that the United States had to embrace Israel publicly in order to allow it to influence the nation's military actions in private.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took risked dividing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Helped Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign 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 turning point which motivated the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump was present nearby as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the deal.

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

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

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

Now Israel has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal