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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar appeared like another escalation that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

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

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

But if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that eluded Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world seem to have contributed in this success.

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

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

The president likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump directed US bombers to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, Trump urged his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was always more strained.

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" argued that the United States had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to act.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the president to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where he received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, Trump sat close as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

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

"This was crucial. His ability to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have faced, and Trump appears to handle relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was leverage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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