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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha appeared like another escalation that pushed the hope of peace out of reach.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

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

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that eluded Joe Biden and his administration.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship Which Biden Never Had

In public, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump often states that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by actions.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under international law.

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

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. As per sources, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in July, even bombing a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, 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 they must agree or else."

Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was consistently more strained.

His administration's "bear hug strategy" held that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took endangered dividing his own political backing, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to act.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout his term, Israel was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza in ruins, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. He provided US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also stopped in Doha and the UAE capital.

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 first term.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year helped change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit the country on this regional tour but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the leader heard repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, Trump was present close as the prime minister personally called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's alliance with his counterpart gave him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

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

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that he used to his benefit, he adds.

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

The group will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken in the original 7 October assault, which resulted in the death of over 1,200 Israelis.

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