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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of peace further away.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an US partner and risked expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

However, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

This is a objective that Trump, 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 disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be negotiated.

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 diplomatic team.

Trump's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Arab world seem to have contributed in this success.

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

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under international law.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the room to exert more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured 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 Syria's military in July, even hitting a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of will and pressure 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 prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to embrace Israel publicly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to act.

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. He lent American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

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 UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the leader heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, the president sat close as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to express regret. 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 area.

Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart gave him the room to influence Israel to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he appears to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal