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At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that drove the hope of peace further away.

This strike on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an US partner and risked expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

However, it turned out to be a pivotal event that culminated in a agreement, announced by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

This is a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

Trump's unique style and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

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

The president likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader directed US bombers to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, Trump's envoy, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israel attacked against Syrian forces in July, including hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" held that the US had to embrace Israel publicly in order to enable it to influence the nation's military actions in private.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

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

Business History Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. He provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

The time he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, Trump sat nearby as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to pressure the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and helped them convince the group to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu personally was leverage that he employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has committed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

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