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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

This strike on 9 September violated the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked expanding the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

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

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

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that escaped Joe Biden and his administration.

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

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also factors involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by actions.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the US embassy in the country 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.

After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to target the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the room to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a Christian church, Trump pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst 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."

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

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

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

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

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where he received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, Trump sat close as Netanyahu himself phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

If Trump's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is far better liked in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Currently Israel has committed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken in the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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