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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another intensification that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

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

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

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

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

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

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this success.

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements involved beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

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

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

During his first presidential term, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under global norms.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in June, Trump directed US bombers to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the room to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to change course.

Trump displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing 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 "bear hug strategy" argued that the US had to support Israel publicly in order to enable it to influence the country's war conduct behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

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

Business History Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. The president lent US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but went to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the leader received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, Trump sat close as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

If Trump's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with the militants," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump appears to do with some success."

The fact that the president is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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