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Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that drove the hope of peace out of reach.

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

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

That represents a goal that Trump, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.

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

But if this agreement holds, 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 the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this success.

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

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

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

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under international law.

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

Those public demonstrations of support may have given the president the room to exert more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was always more strained.

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" held that the United States had to embrace Israel openly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, moving 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 president to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

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

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year helped shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to the country on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where he heard repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, the president sat nearby as Netanyahu himself called the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

If Trump's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure the government to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to do with some success."

The reality that the president is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has committed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal