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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 peace further away.

This strike on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

Trump's distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this success.

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed American aircraft to target the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These public demonstrations of support may have given the president the room to exert more pressure 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 halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israel attacked against Syrian forces in July, even hitting a Christian church, Trump urged his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "bear hug strategy" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to enable it to influence the nation's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to act.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during his term, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. He lent American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have informed the press that this was a turning point which galvanised the president 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 Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, the president sat close as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister personally was an advantage that he employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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