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At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on 9 September violated the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

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

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

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

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

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

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

Trump likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump moved the US embassy in the country from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, the US leader directed American aircraft to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have allowed the president the leeway to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, even hitting a Christian church, Trump pressured Netanyahu to change course.

Trump exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Joe Biden's connection with the Israeli administration was always more strained.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to embrace Israel openly in order to allow it to influence the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own political backing, while Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room to act.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during his term, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

Trump had given Israel a significant latitude in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to change his thinking, says an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited 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 attack on Doha, the president sat close as the prime minister personally called Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

If the president's alliance with his counterpart gave him the ability to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them convince Hamas to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have faced, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was an advantage that Trump used to his advantage, he adds.

Currently Israel has agreed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the war, which has led to the destruction of the territory and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal