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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar seemed like yet another escalation that drove the prospect of peace further away.

This strike on 9 September breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and threatened expanding the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be in ruins.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a deal, declared by Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.

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

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout are still to be worked out.

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

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

However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

Publicly, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called him as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been matched by actions.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president moved the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump directed US bombers to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have given Trump the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, even bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "bear hug approach" argued that the US had to support the nation publicly in order to allow it to moderate the nation's military actions behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took endangered dividing his own political backing, while his successor's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to act.

In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in the territory. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. The president began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but went to the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, Trump was present close as Netanyahu himself phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart gave him the room to influence the government to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a challenge that many previous presidents have faced, and Trump appears to do relatively successfully."

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

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

The group will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal