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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar appeared like another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 violated the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked widening the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

That represents a objective that Trump, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for almost 24 months.

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 deal stands, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that escaped Joe Biden and his administration.

The president's distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

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

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by actions.

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, the US leader ordered American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of support may have allowed Trump the room to apply more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

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

Trump displayed a degree of determination and insistence 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 US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" held that the United States had to support the nation openly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have informed the press that this was a turning point which motivated the president to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped change his thinking, according to an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat close as Netanyahu personally phoned Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and assisted them convince the group to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

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

Currently Israel has committed to freeing over a thousand detainees held in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

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