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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like another intensification that drove the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked expanding the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

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

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

It is just the initial phase towards a lasting resolution, and the details of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be negotiated.

Yet 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 distinct approach and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed in this success.

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

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

Publicly, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.

Trump often states that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the view under global norms.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in the summer, Trump directed American aircraft to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the room to apply more influence on Israel in private. As per sources, Trump's envoy, his representative, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in July, even bombing a place of worship, the US president urged his counterpart to change course.

The leader displayed a degree 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."

Joe Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was consistently more tenuous.

His administration's "close embrace strategy" held that the United States had to support Israel openly in order to enable it to influence the country's war conduct in private.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his political base over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, while his successor's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during his term, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, all its major strategy objectives had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. Hostilities had to end.

The US leader had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. He provided US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

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

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the UAE. He began each of his administrations with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the UAE, was the biggest diplomatic achievement of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped change his thinking, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where he received consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that attack on the city, Trump sat close as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

Assuming the president's relationship with Netanyahu gave him the ability to pressure the government to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their backing, and helped them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump appears to handle with some success."

The fact that Trump is far better liked in Israel than the prime minister personally was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in its jails and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

A conclusion to the war, which has resulted in the devastation of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal