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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that drove the hope of a ceasefire further away.

This strike on September 9 violated the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

But if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that eluded Joe Biden and his administration.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

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

Trump often states that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the US embassy in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump directed American aircraft to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of support may have given the president the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, including bombing a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

The leader displayed a level of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was always more tenuous.

His administration's "bear hug approach" argued that the US had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own political backing, whereas his successor's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to act.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. The president lent American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert 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 Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region 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 went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, the president sat nearby as the prime minister himself called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with the militants," says Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

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

Now the Israeli government has committed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a limited pullback 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 Israelis.

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