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

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an American ally and risked expanding the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be negotiated.

But if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that eluded Biden and his administration.

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have contributed in this success.

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

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under global norms.

When Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump ordered US bombers to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of backing may have allowed Trump the leeway to apply more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, browbeat Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in July, even hitting a Christian church, Trump urged his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was consistently more tenuous.

His administration's "bear hug strategy" argued that the US had to support Israel publicly in order to enable it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took risked fracturing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, Hezbollah to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to apply full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader received consistent appeals to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president was present close as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

If Trump's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to do with some success."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in Israel than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now Israel has committed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal