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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like yet another intensification that drove the hope of peace further away.

This strike on 9 September violated the territorial integrity of an US partner and threatened expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

That represents a goal that he, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

But if this deal stands, it could be Donald Trump's defining accomplishment of his return to office - one that escaped Joe Biden and his administration.

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this success.

But, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also factors at play beyond the influence of either man.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

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

The president likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these warm words have been backed up by actions.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under global norms.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, Trump directed US bombers to target the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given the president the leeway to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

When Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in July, including hitting a place of worship, Trump urged his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" argued that the United States had to embrace the nation openly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. Hostilities had to end.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to apply full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, he also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region earlier this year helped change his thinking, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, Trump was present nearby as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

If Trump's relationship with his counterpart gave him the ability to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and assisted them convince the group to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that many earlier administrations have faced, and he appears to do with some success."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in the nation than Netanyahu personally was leverage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has committed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured in the original 7 October assault, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal