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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

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

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

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

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

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

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

The president's distinct approach and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this breakthrough.

But, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the influence 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 described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are against international law, the position under international law.

When Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the leeway to exert more influence on Israel behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, including bombing a place of worship, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a level of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst 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 connection with the Israeli administration was always more tenuous.

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

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took risked dividing his own political backing, while his successor's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, during his term, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, 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

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to exert 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 official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to the country on this regional tour but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat close as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and helped them convince the group to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. His ability to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and he seems to do relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister personally was an advantage that Trump employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now Israel has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal