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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas delegation in Qatar appeared like another intensification that drove the hope of peace out of reach.

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

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

This is a objective that Trump, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be negotiated.

Yet if this agreement stands, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

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

But, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump often states that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as the country's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under global norms.

When Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump directed US bombers to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of support may have given Trump the leeway to exert more influence on Israel in private. As per sources, Trump's negotiator, his representative, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israel attacked against Syrian forces in July, including hitting a Christian church, the US president urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

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

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

The US leader had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving 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 decisive moment which galvanised the president to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

The time he spent in the capitals 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 regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where he received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump was present nearby as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that many previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to do with some success."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal