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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

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

This is a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

The president's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this breakthrough.

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

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

The president likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump moved the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the view under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump ordered US bombers to strike the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed Trump the leeway to apply more influence on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in July, including hitting a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was always more tenuous.

His administration's "bear hug approach" argued that the United States had to embrace Israel publicly in order to allow it to influence the nation's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led Trump to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

Trump had given Israel a significant latitude in the territory. He provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have told the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations 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 cities of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat close as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the ability to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his benefit, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the war, which has led to the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal