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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

This strike on 9 September violated the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for nearly two years.

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

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

The president's distinct approach and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader directed US bombers to strike the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of backing may have given the president the room to apply more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israel attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, Trump pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" held that the US had to embrace the nation publicly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government 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 in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

The US leader had given Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. He provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to change his thinking, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where he heard repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat nearby as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he appears to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the war, which has resulted in the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal