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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of peace out of reach.

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

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

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 disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

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

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have contributed in this success.

But, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

In public, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his initial time in office, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are against international law, the position under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered American aircraft to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of backing may have allowed the president the room to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to enable it to influence the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took risked fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, led Trump to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had allowed Israel a significant latitude in the territory. The president lent US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a turning point which galvanised the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. This year, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

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

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

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

If the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the demands of the combatants has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in Israel than the prime minister personally was leverage that Trump used to his advantage, he adds.

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 release all the captives still held, living and dead, captured during the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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