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At first, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Qatar appeared like yet another escalation that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened expanding the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

However, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to free all remaining hostages.

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

This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

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

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this success.

However, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the control of either man.

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

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

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

During his first presidential term, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against Iran in the summer, the US leader ordered American aircraft to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those visible shows of support may have given the president the leeway to exert more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's negotiator, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in the summer, even bombing a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, according to an analyst of the a think tank. "There is no example of an American president literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Biden's relationship with Netanyahu's government was consistently more strained.

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" held that the US had to support Israel openly in order to allow it to moderate the country's military actions in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had given Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a turning point which motivated the leader to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's strong connections with the Gulf states are well documented. He has business dealings with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with state visits to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump was present nearby as Netanyahu personally phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader signed off on Trump's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the support of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to pressure Israel to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade the group to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump developed influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The fact that the president is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister himself was leverage that he employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently the Israeli government has committed to freeing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal