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Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha seemed like another intensification that pushed the hope of peace out of reach.

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

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

Yet if this deal holds, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Joe Biden and his administration.

Trump's distinct approach and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this success.

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

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under global norms.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to strike the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of support may have allowed the president the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, even hitting a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace strategy" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took endangered dividing his own political backing, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to act.

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

Trump had allowed Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue completely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have informed the press that this was a turning point which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where he received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, the president sat nearby as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Now Israel has agreed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians held in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of the territory and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal