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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like another intensification that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

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

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that escaped Biden and his diplomatic team.

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

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

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

During his initial time in office, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

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

These visible shows of backing may have given Trump the room to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in July, including hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was always more tenuous.

His administration's "bear hug strategy" held that the United States had to embrace Israel publicly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude in the territory. He provided US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year helped change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, 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, Trump sat nearby as Netanyahu personally phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

If Trump's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that many earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The fact that the president is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister personally was leverage that he used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees held in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

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

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