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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha appeared like another intensification that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened widening the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a agreement, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

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

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

Yet if this deal holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this success.

However, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements involved beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in June, Trump ordered American aircraft to target the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given the president the room to exert more influence on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, 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 tenuous.

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" held that the United States had to embrace Israel openly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took risked fracturing his own political backing, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

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

Business History Helped Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude 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 conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump was present nearby as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the ability to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was an advantage that Trump used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has committed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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