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

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an US partner and risked expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

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

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

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

But if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that escaped Joe 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 both leaders.

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover 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 Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump ordered US bombers to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given the president the leeway to apply more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even hitting a place of worship, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

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

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

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" argued that the United States had to support Israel publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's war conduct behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, during his term, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. He lent American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have told the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped change his thinking, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, Trump sat nearby as Netanyahu personally phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to pressure the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them convince the group to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he seems to do with some success."

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

Now Israel has agreed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, living and dead, captured in the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the war, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal