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At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar seemed like another intensification that drove the prospect of peace further away.

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

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

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

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

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

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

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have contributed in this breakthrough.

But, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president moved 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 against international law, the position under global norms.

When Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader directed US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of backing may have given the president the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in July, including hitting a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing 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 "close embrace strategy" held that the United States had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

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

Business History Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted the president to issue an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. He lent US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

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

The leader's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. He began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations 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 capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit the country on this regional tour but went to the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump was present nearby as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader gained influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says Jon Alterman 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 combatants has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu himself was leverage that he used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has resulted in the devastation of the territory and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal