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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the hope of peace further away.

This strike on 9 September violated the territorial integrity of an American ally and risked expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

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

That represents a objective that he, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this success.

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by actions.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

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

These visible shows of support may have given Trump the room to apply more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

When Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst 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 connection with the Israeli administration was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" argued that the US had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran chastened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

The time he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, the president sat close as the prime minister himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming the president's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," says an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was leverage that he employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

The group will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the war, which has resulted in the destruction of the territory and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal