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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha seemed like another escalation that drove the prospect of peace out of reach.

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an US partner and risked expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement stands, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this breakthrough.

However, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered American aircraft to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of support may have given Trump the room to apply more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, 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 some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to embrace Israel publicly in order to enable it to moderate the country's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took risked dividing his own political backing, while Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, led the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to end.

Trump 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 strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

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

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to change his thinking, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the leader received consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.

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

If the president's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them persuade the group to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump gained influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to do with some success."

The fact that the president is far better liked in Israel than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken during the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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