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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

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

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

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

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout are still to be negotiated.

Yet if this deal stands, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that escaped Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

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

The president often states that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump 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 global norms.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in June, Trump directed US bombers to target the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

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

After Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even hitting a Christian church, Trump pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example 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 the Israeli administration was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took risked dividing his own political backing, while Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

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

Commercial Background Helped Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president lent US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have told media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit Israel on this regional tour but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where he heard repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, Trump was present close as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming Trump's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and helped them convince the group to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that Trump used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has committed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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