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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

This strike on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

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

That represents a goal that he, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be negotiated.

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

The president's distinct approach and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in June, the US leader ordered American aircraft to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given the president the room to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syrian forces in July, even hitting a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "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 connection with Netanyahu's government was always more tenuous.

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" held that the United States had to embrace Israel publicly in order to enable it to influence the nation's military actions in private.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background 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 Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. He provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

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

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader received consistent appeals to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat close as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming the president's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and Trump appears to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that he used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has committed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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