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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the hope of peace out of reach.

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

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

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

That represents a goal that Trump, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement stands, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Biden and his administration.

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this breakthrough.

But, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of either man.

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

The president likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against Iran in June, Trump ordered US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have allowed the president the leeway to apply more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israel attacked against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a place of worship, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of will and insistence 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 prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" argued that the United States had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the simple fact that, throughout his term, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to exert 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 United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits 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 travel to the country on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where he heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, Trump was present nearby as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the ability to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade the group to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve 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 Trump appears to handle with some success."

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

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

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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