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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like yet another escalation that pushed the hope of peace further away.

This strike on 9 September breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

This is a goal that he, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this success.

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

Strong Ties Which Eluded Biden

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump often states that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are against international law, the position under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader ordered US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the leeway to apply more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, Trump's negotiator, his representative, 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 attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, Trump pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a degree of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing 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 strategy" held that the US had to support the nation publicly in order to enable it to influence the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to end.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. He lent American military might to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months helped change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, Trump sat close as the prime minister personally phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

If the president's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their backing, and helped them convince Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed influence with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to handle with some success."

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

Now Israel has committed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured during the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

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