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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Doha appeared like yet another escalation that drove the hope of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, announced by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

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

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have contributed in this breakthrough.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

Publicly, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under global norms.

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

These visible shows of support may have given Trump the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a place of worship, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

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

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. He provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

The time devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president was present close as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

If Trump's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump developed influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and he seems to handle relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump used to his advantage, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has committed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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