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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas delegation in Qatar appeared like another intensification that pushed the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on 9 September breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

Instead, it turned out to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

But if this agreement stands, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

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

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his initial time in office, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned 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 American aircraft to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in July, including bombing a place of worship, Trump urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the US had to embrace Israel publicly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

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

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

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

Trump had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped change his thinking, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat close as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

Assuming the president's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst 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 problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu personally was an advantage that he employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in its jails 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 caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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