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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, announced by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

This is a objective that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

But if this agreement stands, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government 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 involved beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

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

Trump often states that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these warm words have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under international law.

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

Those visible shows of support may have allowed the president the leeway to apply more influence on Israel in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of a number of captives.

When Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says 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 consistently more strained.

His administration's "close embrace strategy" held that the United States had to embrace Israel openly in order to enable it to influence the nation's military actions in private.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran chastened, 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 Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led Trump to issue an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. He lent US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

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 strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. He began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

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

The time devoted in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit Israel on this regional tour but went to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat close as the prime minister himself called Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and not succumb to the demands of the combatants has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

The fact that the president is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister himself was an advantage that he employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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