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At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Doha appeared like another intensification that drove the prospect of peace out of reach.

The attack on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

However, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for almost 24 months.

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

Yet if this agreement stands, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

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

The president often states that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under international law.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These public demonstrations of support may have allowed Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's negotiator, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of a number of captives.

When Israel attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "bear hug approach" held that the US had to support Israel openly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions in private.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. He lent American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader heard repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president was present nearby as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the room to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with the militants," notes Jon Alterman 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 demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have faced, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu personally was an advantage that Trump employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has committed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

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

A conclusion to the war, which has resulted in the destruction of the territory and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal