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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another intensification that pushed the hope of peace further away.

This strike on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an US partner and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, announced by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

This is a objective that he, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

But if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

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

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described 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, the president moved the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, the US leader directed US bombers to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given the president the room to apply more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

The leader exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was always more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" held that the US had to support Israel publicly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

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

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

The time devoted in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this regional tour but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump was present nearby as Netanyahu himself called Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the ability to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the demands of the combatants has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is far better liked in Israel than Netanyahu personally was an advantage that he employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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