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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas delegation in Doha appeared like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

This strike on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, announced by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

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 Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

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

Trump's unique style and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this success.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

In public, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, Trump ordered US bombers to strike the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed Trump the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including bombing a place of worship, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace approach" held that the US had to embrace Israel openly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered dividing his own political backing, while Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during his term, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have told the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. This year, he also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

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

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat nearby as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming the president's alliance with his counterpart gave him the ability to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and assisted them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding 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 fact that the president is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister personally was leverage that Trump used to his benefit, he adds.

Currently Israel has committed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has resulted in the devastation of the territory and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal