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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

The attack on 9 September breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

The president's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

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

Trump often states that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under international law.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in June, the US leader directed American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, Trump urged his counterpart to change course.

The leader displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Biden's connection with the Israeli administration was always more strained.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to moderate the country's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to end.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. However an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

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

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit the country on this regional tour 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 attack on Doha, the president sat close as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says 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 struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that he employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

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