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Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas delegation in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

The attack on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an US partner and risked expanding the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

That represents a goal that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had pursued for nearly two years.

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be negotiated.

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances 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 elements at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

In public, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

The president often states that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

When the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the leeway to apply more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, the US president urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president 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.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took risked dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to act.

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

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, led the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had given Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. He lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing 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 turning point which motivated the president to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, he also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to the country on this regional tour but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where he heard repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, Trump was present close as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

If Trump's relationship with his counterpart gave him the ability to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and assisted them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," 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 demands of the combatants has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The fact that the president is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that he employed to his advantage, he adds.

Currently Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand detainees held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the initial October 7 assault, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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