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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha seemed like another intensification that pushed the hope of a ceasefire further away.

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

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

This is a goal that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for almost 24 months.

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

Yet if this agreement stands, 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 contributed in this success.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his initial time in office, 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 occupied territories are illegal, the view under international law.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump ordered American aircraft to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed the president the leeway to exert more influence on Israel in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

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

The leader exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader 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 connection with the Israeli administration was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug 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.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took risked fracturing his own political backing, whereas his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. He lent American military might to Israel's campaign in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump was present close as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the ability to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that he employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now Israel has committed to freeing over a thousand detainees held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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