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Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that drove the hope of a ceasefire further away.

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

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

This is a objective that he, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is 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 negotiated.

But if this deal holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that eluded Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's unique style and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors involved beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

In public, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these positive statements have been matched by actions.

During his initial time in office, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed US bombers to target the nation'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 influence on Israel in private. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in July, even bombing a Christian church, the US president urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a degree of will and pressure on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was always more tenuous.

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" argued that the United States had to embrace Israel publicly in order to enable it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered dividing his own political backing, while Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to end.

Trump had given Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president lent American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have told the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. 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, Trump also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his first term.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard consistent appeals to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, the president sat nearby as Netanyahu personally phoned Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and not succumb to the demands 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 Trump employed to his benefit, he adds.

Currently Israel has agreed to releasing over a thousand detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the war, which has resulted in the devastation of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal