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

This strike on 9 September violated the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened expanding the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

That represents a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

Yet if this agreement stands, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

The president's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this success.

But, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these warm words have been matched by actions.

During his initial time in office, the president moved the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, the view under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, Trump directed US bombers to strike the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have allowed the president the leeway to exert more influence on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, 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.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, even hitting a Christian church, Trump urged his counterpart to change course.

The leader exhibited a degree of will and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, 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 consistently more tenuous.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" held that the United States had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the nation's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took risked dividing his own political backing, whereas his successor'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 his term, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals 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 not the intended targets, prompted Trump to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue completely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to apply full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but went to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, the president was present nearby as Netanyahu himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's alliance with his counterpart provided him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and helped them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister himself was leverage that he used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has committed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the captives still held, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal