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Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar appeared like another intensification that pushed the hope of peace further away.

This strike on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and threatened widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, announced by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

That represents a goal that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for nearly two years.

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be negotiated.

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

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been matched by actions.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the US embassy in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

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

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed the president the room to exert more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, Trump urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked dividing his own political backing, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

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

The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. He provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the president to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. This year, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he heard repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, the president was present close as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

Assuming the president's alliance with his counterpart gave him the room to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them convince Hamas to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes 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 lot of previous presidents have faced, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister personally was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the war, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal