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Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

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

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be negotiated.

But if this deal stands, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

Trump's distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this success.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the control of either man.

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

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

The president likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in June, the US leader ordered American aircraft to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of backing may have given Trump the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, Trump pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to support Israel publicly in order to enable it to influence the nation's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during his term, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Support from Arab States

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

The US leader had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this regional tour but went to the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, Trump sat close as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and assisted them persuade Hamas to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump gained influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," says an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he appears to handle with some success."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump used to his advantage, he adds.

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

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

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