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Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like another intensification that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an US partner and risked expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

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

That represents a goal that he, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that eluded Joe Biden and his administration.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this success.

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

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are against international law, the position under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, Trump directed American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of support may have allowed Trump the leeway to apply more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israel attacked against Syrian forces in July, including hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

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

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took risked dividing his own political backing, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

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

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, led the president to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the president to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

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

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year helped change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump was present nearby as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader developed influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he appears to do with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that he used to his benefit, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has committed to freeing over a thousand detainees held in its jails and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will release all the captives still held, living and dead, captured in the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has led to the destruction of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal