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At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of peace out of reach.

The attack on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

That represents a goal that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for nearly two years.

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

Trump's distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

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

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

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

These visible shows of backing may have allowed the president the leeway to apply more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even hitting a place of worship, Trump urged his counterpart to change course.

Trump displayed a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" held that the United States had to embrace Israel openly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took risked dividing his own political backing, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

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

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have told the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, he also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, Trump was present nearby as Netanyahu himself phoned Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming Trump's alliance with his counterpart gave him the ability to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them convince the group to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump gained influence with the Israelis, and indirectly with the militants," says an analyst of the a research center.

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

The reality that Trump is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister himself was leverage that he employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now Israel has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

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