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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Qatar appeared like yet another intensification that pushed the prospect of peace out of reach.

The attack on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy 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 captives still held.

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

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

But if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment 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 played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump often states that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described Trump as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these warm words have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump ordered US bombers to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those visible shows of backing may have allowed Trump the leeway to apply more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, including bombing a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

Trump exhibited a level of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Joe Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was always more strained.

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

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, led the president to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to stop.

The US leader had given Israel a significant latitude in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have told the press that this was a turning point which galvanised the leader to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump sat nearby as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the ability to pressure the government to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince the group to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," says an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle relatively successfully."

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

Now Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will release all the captives still held, 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 destruction of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal