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

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

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

That represents a goal that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step 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 stands, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's distinct approach and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

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

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these warm words have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the view under global norms.

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

These visible shows of backing may have given Trump the leeway to apply more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israel attacked against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president 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 "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to embrace Israel publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's military actions in private.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to act.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year helped shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit the country on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where he heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, Trump was present nearby as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming the president's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and helped them convince Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump seems to do relatively successfully."

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

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal