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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha appeared like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

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

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

That represents a goal that he, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

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

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this breakthrough.

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also factors at play beyond the control of both leaders.

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 the Israeli leader has described him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the view under international law.

When Israel began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, the US leader directed American aircraft to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the room to exert more influence on Israel in private. As per sources, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, including bombing a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a degree of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was consistently more tenuous.

His administration's "close embrace approach" held that the United States had to support the nation openly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took endangered dividing his own political backing, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. He lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

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

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

The time devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year helped change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat nearby as Netanyahu himself phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on the president'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 ability to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and helped them convince Hamas to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the combatants has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump employed to his benefit, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has committed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in its jails and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured during the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the war, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal