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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha seemed like another intensification that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

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

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, announced by Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

That represents a objective that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that eluded Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have contributed in this breakthrough.

However, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of either man.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

In public, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the US embassy in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under global norms.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump ordered American aircraft to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the leeway to apply more influence on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, his representative, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured 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 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" held that the United States had to support the nation publicly in order to enable it to moderate the country's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, 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 resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to end.

The US leader had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. He lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, 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 helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the leader heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump sat nearby as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's alliance with his counterpart gave him the room to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was leverage that he used to his advantage, he adds.

Currently Israel has agreed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken in the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the war, which has led to the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal