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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar appeared like yet another intensification that pushed the hope of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

That represents a objective that Trump, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for almost 24 months.

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that escaped Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this success.

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

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

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

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under global norms.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed American aircraft to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed Trump the leeway to apply more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, the president's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" held that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to enable 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 Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout his term, Israel was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have told the press that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, he 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 diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, says an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to the country on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, Trump sat close as the prime minister himself called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming the president's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the ability to pressure the government to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that many previous presidents have faced, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

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

Currently Israel has committed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release 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.

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