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

This strike on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

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

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

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

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

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

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

Publicly, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under international law.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against Iran in the summer, the US leader directed US bombers to strike the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have allowed Trump the leeway to apply more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. As per sources, Trump's negotiator, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was consistently more tenuous.

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

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to act.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during his term, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. 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.

A number of Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, the president sat close as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership 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 region.

Assuming Trump's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the room to pressure the government to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade the group to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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