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

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

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

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

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump often states that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his first presidential term, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in June, the US leader directed US bombers to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of support may have given Trump the room to exert more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, even hitting a place of worship, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

The leader displayed a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace strategy" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took risked fracturing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's solid Republican base gave him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during his term, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. He lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue completely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, Trump sat nearby as Netanyahu himself called Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming Trump's alliance with his counterpart gave him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the deal.

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

"This was crucial. The capacity 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 faced, and Trump seems to do relatively successfully."

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

Currently Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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