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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

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

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be negotiated.

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

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this success.

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

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

Publicly, Donald Trump and 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 "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

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

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered American aircraft to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of backing may have allowed the president the room to exert more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in July, including bombing a place of worship, the US president urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a degree of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was always more tenuous.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's military actions in private.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took risked dividing his own political backing, whereas his successor's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, during his term, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had given Israel a significant latitude in the territory. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

The time devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat nearby as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart gave him the room to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that many earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to do with some success."

The reality that the president is far better liked in Israel than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in its jails and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

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

An end to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal