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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another intensification that drove the hope of peace further away.

This strike on 9 September breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

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

That represents a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

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

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

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also factors involved beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his initial time in office, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location 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.

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

Those public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

Trump displayed a degree of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

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

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have told the press that this was a turning point which galvanised the president to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, according to 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 Qatar where the leader received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat close as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the ability to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump gained influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to do with some success."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister personally was an advantage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.

Now Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the war, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal