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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar appeared like another intensification that pushed the hope of a ceasefire further away.

This strike on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

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

This is a objective that Trump, and Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.

This marks just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that eluded Biden and his diplomatic team.

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

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors involved beyond the influence of either man.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

Publicly, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as the country's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump directed American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the leeway to apply more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's envoy, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the release of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller 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 the Israeli administration was consistently more tenuous.

His administration's "bear hug approach" argued that the US had to support Israel openly in order to enable 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 Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to act.

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, led the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to end.

The US leader had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the leader heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, the president was present close as Netanyahu personally phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump gained influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that he used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now Israel has committed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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