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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar appeared like yet another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

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

That represents a goal that he, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

In public, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

The president often states that the nation has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by actions.

During his initial time in office, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under international law.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in June, Trump directed US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of support may have given Trump the room to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

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

Trump exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

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

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during his term, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, led the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. He lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have told the press that this was a turning point which galvanised the leader to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but went to the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where he received consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat close as the prime minister personally phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the room to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with the militants," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu himself was leverage that he used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured during the initial October 7 assault, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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