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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar seemed like another intensification that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

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

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

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

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

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

Yet if this deal stands, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his diplomatic team.

The president's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this success.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors 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 often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his initial time in office, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the view under global norms.

When Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of backing may have given the president the leeway to apply more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's military actions in private.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own political backing, while Trump's solid Republican base gave him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during his term, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

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

Commercial Background Helped Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to deliver an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

Trump had allowed Israel a significant latitude in the territory. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an attack on Qatari territory 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 galvanised the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, says an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where he received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, Trump sat nearby as Netanyahu himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming Trump's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the ability to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that he employed to his benefit, the expert continues.

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

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

A conclusion to the conflict, which has led to the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal