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Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another intensification that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

The attack on 9 September breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

However, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

That represents a objective that he, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for nearly two years.

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

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

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

The president often states that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed US bombers to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed the president the room to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, even hitting a place of worship, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president 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 tenuous.

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" held that the United States had to support Israel publicly in order to enable it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own political backing, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led the president to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

Trump had given Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region in recent months helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where he received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump sat nearby as the prime minister himself called Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart gave him the room to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," says Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the warring sides has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to do with some success."

The fact that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured during the initial October 7 assault, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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