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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another escalation that pushed the hope of peace out of reach.

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

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

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

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

But if this agreement holds, it could be 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 the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

In public, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by actions.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader ordered American aircraft to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These public demonstrations of support may have allowed the president the room to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, including hitting a place of worship, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Biden's connection with the Israeli administration was always more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" held that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance 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 chastened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, he also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, such as 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, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this regional tour but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he heard repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, Trump was present nearby as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge 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 the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the destruction of the territory and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal