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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another intensification that drove the hope of a ceasefire further away.

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

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

That represents a objective that he, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for nearly two years.

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

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

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this success.

But, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump often states that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by actions.

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran 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 leeway to exert more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a level of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace approach" held that the United States had to embrace Israel openly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year helped shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump sat nearby as Netanyahu himself phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming Trump's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the room to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and assisted them persuade the group to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

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

Currently Israel has agreed to freeing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will free all the captives still held, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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