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Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like another escalation that pushed the hope of a ceasefire further away.

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

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

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

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

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be negotiated.

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this success.

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader directed US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have given the president the room to exert more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a degree of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was always more strained.

His administration's "bear hug strategy" held that the United States 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 backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert 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 UAE. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, he also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits 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 Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump sat close as the prime minister personally phoned 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 influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and helped them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump seems to handle relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured during the original 7 October assault, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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