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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

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

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement stands, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this success.

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

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump ordered US bombers to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of backing may have allowed the president the room to apply more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, Trump's negotiator, his representative, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even hitting a place of worship, Trump urged his counterpart to change course.

Trump displayed a degree of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

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

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

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

The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue completely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

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

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat close as Netanyahu himself called Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained influence 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 do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he appears to do with some success."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was an advantage that he used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in its jails and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the war, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal