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Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha appeared like yet another escalation that pushed the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and risked expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, announced by Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

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

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that escaped Joe Biden and his administration.

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

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". And these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the position under international law.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump directed American aircraft to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a Christian church, Trump urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister 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 Netanyahu's government was always more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" held that the US had to embrace Israel openly in order to enable it to influence the country's war conduct behind closed doors.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to end.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. This year, Trump also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and the state where he received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, Trump sat close as Netanyahu personally phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader gained influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the combatants has been a problem that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in Israel than the prime minister personally was an advantage that he employed to his advantage, he adds.

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

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

A conclusion to the conflict, which has resulted in the devastation of the territory and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal