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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

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

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

However, it turned out to be a pivotal event that culminated in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

This is a goal that Trump, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement stands, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his diplomatic team.

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

But, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Biden Never Had

In public, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his first presidential term, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank 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 most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the room to apply more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. As per sources, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace approach" held that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to allow it to influence the nation's military actions in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took risked dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to act.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, led the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where he received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump was present close as the prime minister personally called Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that many previous presidents have faced, and Trump seems to handle relatively successfully."

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

Currently Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand detainees held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

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