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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar seemed like another escalation that drove the prospect of peace further away.

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

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

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

That represents a objective that he, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

Yet if this deal holds, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that eluded Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump'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 factors at play beyond the control of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Biden Never Had

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

The president often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these warm words have been backed up by actions.

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the view under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump ordered American aircraft to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of backing may have allowed the president the leeway to apply more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a place of worship, Trump pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's connection with the Israeli administration was consistently more tenuous.

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" argued that the United States had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took risked dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's solid Republican base gave him more room to act.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped change his thinking, says an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and the state where he heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat nearby as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and helped them convince the group to agree to the arrangement.

"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.

"That made a difference. His ability 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 struggled with, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that he used to his advantage, the expert continues.

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

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured during the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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