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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha appeared like another escalation that drove the hope of peace out of reach.

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

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

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

This is a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

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 negotiated.

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have contributed in this success.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by actions.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the leeway to exert more influence on Israel behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in the summer, even bombing a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

His administration's "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to embrace Israel publicly in order to enable 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 Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own political backing, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, Hezbollah to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led the president to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, the president was present nearby as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred 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.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that many earlier administrations have faced, and Trump seems to handle relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is far better liked in Israel than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump used to his benefit, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has committed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken in the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

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