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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

This strike on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

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

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

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

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

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that the nation has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the position under global norms.

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

Those visible shows of support may have given the president the room to exert more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, the president's negotiator, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to change course.

Trump displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

His administration's "bear hug strategy" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the nation's military actions behind closed doors.

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

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

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

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, led Trump to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the leader to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

The leader's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where he received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, the president was present close as Netanyahu himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the combatants has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister personally was leverage that Trump used to his advantage, he adds.

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

The group will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the war, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal