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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another intensification that pushed the hope of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an US partner and threatened widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a key moment that culminated in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

Yet if this agreement stands, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that escaped Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this breakthrough.

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the control of both leaders.

A Close Relationship Which Biden Never Had

Publicly, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

The president likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". And these warm words have been matched by actions.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the view under international law.

When Israel began its bombing campaign 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 allowed the president the room to exert more influence on Israel behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the release of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in July, including bombing a place of worship, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, according to an analyst of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Biden's connection with the Israeli administration was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the nation's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took risked dividing his own political backing, while his successor's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Gain Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to end.

The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude in the territory. He lent US armed support to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an strike on Qatar soil 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 told the press that this was a turning point which motivated the president to apply full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. The president began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not visit Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where he received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat nearby as the prime minister personally called Qatar to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming Trump's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the ability to influence the government to strike a deal, 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 gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in its jails and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, captured during the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the war, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal