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Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar appeared like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on 9 September violated the territorial integrity of an US partner and threatened widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

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

That represents a goal that he, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

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

The president's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this success.

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

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

In public, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

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

Throughout his initial time in office, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

When the Israeli military began its bombing campaign 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 public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the leeway to apply more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of some hostages.

When Israel attacked against Syria's military in July, even hitting a Christian church, the US president urged his counterpart to change course.

Trump displayed a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was always more tenuous.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to enable it to moderate the country's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions 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 gave him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Support from Arab States

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

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have told the press that this was a turning point which motivated the president to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year helped change his thinking, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this regional tour but went to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, Trump sat close as the prime minister personally phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's alliance with his counterpart gave him the ability to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade the group to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage 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 own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to handle relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.

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

The group will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the war, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal