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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that drove the hope of peace out of reach.

The attack on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and risked expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

But if this deal stands, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this success.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

In public, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump often states that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in June, Trump ordered American aircraft to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of support may have given Trump the room to apply more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

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

Trump displayed a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the US had to embrace Israel openly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's military actions behind closed doors.

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

Ultimately, 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 reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran chastened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. He provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue completely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the president to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. This year, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat nearby as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

If Trump's relationship with his counterpart provided him the ability to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader gained influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

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

Currently Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the war, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal