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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Doha appeared like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of peace further away.

The attack on 9 September violated the territorial integrity of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, announced by President Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

That represents a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be worked out.

But if this deal stands, 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 seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

But, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

In public, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that the nation has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

During his initial time in office, the president moved the US embassy in Israel 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 position under global norms.

When the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, Trump directed US bombers to strike the Iran'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 pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including hitting a place of worship, Trump pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" held that the US had to support Israel publicly in order to enable it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, while his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to act.

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

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack 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 end.

Trump had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have informed the press that this was a turning point which galvanised the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. He began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year helped shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but went to 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 Doha, the president sat close as Netanyahu personally phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming the president's alliance with his counterpart gave him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade the group to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader gained influence with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with the militants," says an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump seems to do relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister himself was leverage that he employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now Israel has committed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the war, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal