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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha appeared like another intensification that drove the hope of peace out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

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

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

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

Yet 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 key alliances with Israel and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

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

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the view under international law.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against Iran in the summer, Trump directed American aircraft to target the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the leeway to apply more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a place of worship, Trump pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump displayed a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to enable it to influence the nation's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own political backing, while his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

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

Trump had given Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. He lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's strong connections with the Arab monarchies 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 Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to change his thinking, according to an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where he heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, the president sat nearby as Netanyahu personally phoned Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

If the president's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the ability to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the deal.

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

"This was crucial. His ability to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the combatants has been a problem that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and he seems to do with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that he used to his advantage, he adds.

Now Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the war, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal