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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar appeared like yet another intensification that drove the hope of peace further away.

The attack on September 9 violated the territorial integrity of an US partner and threatened expanding the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

This is a goal that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had pursued for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

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

The president's unique style and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of either man.

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader ordered US bombers to target the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those visible shows of backing may have allowed Trump the leeway to apply more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

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

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

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

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

The time devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat close as Netanyahu himself called Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the ability to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump developed influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the combatants has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that he used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

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

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