The negotiations picked up steam from there. Regional leaders, including the Turks and Qataris, helped lean on Hamas. Turkey, a member of NATO, provided a boost by offering Hamas’ political leaders protection from Israeli strikes if they came to the table, says Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Turkey has quite a bit of sway over Hamas’ political wing,” he says, “and I think Ankara used that influence.”
Trump applied pressure too, warning that if the militant group refused to disarm or attempted to subvert the deal, it would face “complete obliteration.” The demand was clear: the return of every Israeli captive, no longer in stages. “I said, ‘No more of that. You’re giving us the f-cking hostages, all of them,’” Trump says.
The threat drew credibility from the recent strikes on Iran. “The real clincher was Trump’s willingness to use military force,” says Oren. “The previous Democratic administrations were very averse to using military force. They preferred soft power. Soft power is not widely respected in the Middle East.”