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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another intensification that drove the hope of peace out of reach.

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

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

Instead, it turned out to be a pivotal event that culminated in a deal, declared 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.

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be negotiated.

But if this deal stands, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors at play beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump ordered American aircraft to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have allowed Trump the room to exert more influence on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in July, even bombing a place of worship, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

Trump displayed a level of determination and pressure 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 leader that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" argued that the US had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the country'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 conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had allowed Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. He provided US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have told the press that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, he also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump was present close as Netanyahu himself phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, 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 area.

If Trump's relationship with his counterpart gave him the ability to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries 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 warring sides has been a challenge that many earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The reality that the president is far better liked in Israel than the prime minister personally was leverage that he used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has agreed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians held in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

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