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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar appeared like another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

That represents a goal that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

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 key alliances with Israel and the Arab world appear to have contributed in this success.

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

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under global norms.

When Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader directed American aircraft to target the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those visible shows of backing may have allowed Trump the leeway to apply more influence on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in July, including bombing a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

The leader displayed a degree of will and pressure on an Israel's leader 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."

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

His administration's "bear hug approach" held that the US had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while his successor's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, led Trump to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. He lent American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. He began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region in recent months helped change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on Doha, the president sat nearby as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

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 the group to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.

Now Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

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

An end to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal