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At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar appeared like another escalation that drove the prospect of peace out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

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

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

But if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that eluded Joe Biden and his administration.

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

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

In public, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president moved the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under international law.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump ordered American aircraft to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have allowed Trump the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in July, even hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace strategy" held that the US had to embrace the nation publicly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions in private.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took risked fracturing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, led Trump to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where he received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, Trump was present nearby as Netanyahu personally phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval 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 his counterpart gave him the ability to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and helped them convince Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained influence with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that many previous presidents have faced, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister himself was leverage that Trump employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has committed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in its jails and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal