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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas delegation in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

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

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

That represents a objective that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had pursued for nearly two years.

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

But if this agreement stands, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world seem to have played a role in this success.

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

A Close Relationship That Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president often states that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been backed up by actions.

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in June, Trump directed US bombers to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of support may have given the president the leeway to apply more pressure on Israel in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the release of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in July, even bombing a place of worship, the US president urged his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of will and insistence 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 directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Joe Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

His administration's "close embrace strategy" argued that the United States had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to moderate the country's military actions behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took risked fracturing his own political backing, while his successor's solid Republican base provided him more room 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 chastened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided US armed support to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing 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 turning point which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the leader heard repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump was present close as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the arrangement.

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

"This was crucial. 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 previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was an advantage that he used to his advantage, he adds.

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

The group will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured during the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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