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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that drove the hope of peace further away.

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

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

This is a goal that Trump, and Joe Biden previously, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

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

Trump's distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this success.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of either man.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

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

Trump often states that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered American aircraft to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have allowed Trump the room to exert more influence on Israel in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israel attacked against Syria's military in July, even bombing a Christian church, the US president urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "bear hug strategy" held that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the nation's military actions in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background 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 issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war 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 Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving 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 apply full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. He began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year helped shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat close as Netanyahu personally phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump used to his benefit, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has committed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken in the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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