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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like yet another escalation that drove the hope of peace further away.

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

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

This is a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

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

Trump's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this breakthrough.

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors involved beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

Publicly, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

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

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under global norms.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in the summer, Trump ordered US bombers to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have allowed Trump the room to exert more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's envoy, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in July, including bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a degree of will and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" held that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, during his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an ultimatum 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 Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to exert 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 official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat nearby as the prime minister himself called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and helped them convince Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," 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 problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he appears to do with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister personally was an advantage that he used to his advantage, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has committed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured in the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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