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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another intensification that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

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

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

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

This is a objective that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is 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 stands, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that eluded Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this success.

But, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of either man.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

Publicly, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that the nation has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president moved the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are against international law, the position under international law.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, including hitting a place of worship, Trump urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" held that the United States had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took risked dividing his own political backing, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout his term, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. He provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where he heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump was present nearby as the prime minister himself phoned 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 backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes 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 combatants has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump seems to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump used to his benefit, he adds.

Now Israel has agreed to releasing over a thousand detainees held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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