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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar seemed like another intensification that pushed the hope of a ceasefire further away.

This strike on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

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

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

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

But if this deal stands, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's distinct approach and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem 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 Which Biden Never Had

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv 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.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed US bombers to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of support may have allowed Trump the room to apply more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israel attacked against Syrian forces in July, even hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a degree of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing 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.

His administration's "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to embrace the nation openly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own political backing, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

The US leader had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. However an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where he heard repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat nearby as Netanyahu himself phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the ability to pressure the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade the group to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump developed influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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

The reality that the president is far better liked in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump used to his advantage, he adds.

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

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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