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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

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

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

This is a goal that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for nearly two years.

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, 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 eluded Biden and his administration.

Trump's unique style and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this success.

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements involved beyond the control of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

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

The president likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view 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 atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the room to apply more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's negotiator, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israeli forces attacked against Syrian forces in July, including bombing a place of worship, the US president urged Netanyahu to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was always more strained.

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to support Israel openly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took risked fracturing his own political backing, whereas his successor's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to act.

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed Israel a relatively free hand in the territory. The president lent US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit Israel on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he received consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat close as Netanyahu himself called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming Trump's relationship with his counterpart gave him the ability to influence the government to reach an agreement, his history with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," says an analyst of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a problem that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than Netanyahu personally was an advantage that Trump used to his advantage, he adds.

Currently Israel has agreed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in its jails and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken in the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

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