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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like yet another escalation that drove the hope of peace further away.

The attack on 9 September breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

That represents a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for nearly two years.

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

But if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

Trump's unique style and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have contributed in this breakthrough.

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

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

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

The president likes to say that the nation has no greater ally, 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 actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president moved the US embassy in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under international law.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, Trump ordered American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those visible shows of backing may have given the president the room to exert more pressure on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, including bombing a Christian church, the US president pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader exhibited a degree of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was always more tenuous.

His administration's "bear hug approach" argued that the United States had to support Israel openly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Helped Secure Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. He lent US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have informed the press that this was a turning point which motivated the president to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where he received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, the president sat close as Netanyahu personally called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that many previous presidents have faced, and he appears to handle with some success."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister personally was leverage that Trump employed to his benefit, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to releasing over a thousand detainees held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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