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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another intensification that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

The attack on 9 September breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, announced by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

That represents a objective that he, and President 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 are still to be negotiated.

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

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

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump often states that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under global norms.

After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have allowed the president the room to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in the summer, even hitting a Christian church, the US president urged his counterpart to change course.

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

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

His administration's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to embrace Israel openly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took risked fracturing his own domestic support, while his successor's solid Republican base gave him more room to act.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to apply full force to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, he also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped change his thinking, says an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to the country on this regional tour but went to the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat nearby as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's alliance with his counterpart provided him the ability to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them convince the group to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity 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 appears to do with some success."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in Israel than the prime minister personally was leverage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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