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Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

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

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

However, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

This is a objective that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

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

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

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

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

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

The president likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

When Israel 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 backing may have given the president the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, Trump's negotiator, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, Trump pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace approach" argued that the US had to support the nation openly in order to allow it to influence the nation's military actions in private.

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

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

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, led the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have told media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the president to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president was present nearby as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

Assuming Trump's relationship with his counterpart provided him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

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

The fact that the president is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump used to his advantage, he adds.

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

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the war, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal