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Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas delegation in Qatar seemed like another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened widening the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

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

That represents a goal that Trump, and Joe Biden previously, 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 full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that escaped Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's distinct approach and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

The president likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his initial time in office, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under international law.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader directed American aircraft to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of support may have given Trump the room to apply more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, Trump pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump displayed a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "bear hug approach" held that the US had to embrace Israel openly in order to allow it to influence the country's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Helped Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led Trump to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue completely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat nearby as Netanyahu himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

If the president's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the room to pressure the government to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, 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 own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he seems to do with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that he used to his advantage, he adds.

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

The group will free all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

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