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At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of peace out of reach.

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

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

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

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

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

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

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

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Biden Never Had

Publicly, 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 "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under international law.

When the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump ordered American aircraft to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the leeway to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, Trump's envoy, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even hitting a place of worship, the US president urged his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of will 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 literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was consistently more strained.

His administration's "close embrace strategy" held that the US had to embrace Israel openly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, during his term, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led Trump to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. He provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to change his thinking, says an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump was present close as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's alliance with his counterpart gave him the room to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," says Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have faced, and Trump seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump employed to his benefit, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing over a thousand detainees held in its jails and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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