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At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Doha seemed like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on 9 September violated the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

That represents a goal that he, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

But if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that escaped Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

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

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

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

The president often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been matched by deeds.

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the US embassy in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump directed American aircraft to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of support may have given Trump the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

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

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, while his successor's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military 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 entirely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the leader to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, he also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped change his thinking, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, Trump was present close as Netanyahu personally called Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the ability to pressure the government to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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

The fact that the president is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu personally was leverage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.

Now Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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