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Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar seemed like another intensification that pushed the prospect of peace further away.

The attack on 9 September breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, announced by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

That represents a goal that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had pursued for almost 24 months.

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, 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 return to office - one that escaped Biden and his administration.

Trump's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Arab world appear to have contributed in this breakthrough.

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

Strong Ties That Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and Netanyahu has described him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

During his initial time in office, the president relocated the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the view under global norms.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in June, the US leader ordered US bombers to target the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of backing may have given the president the room to apply more influence on Israel in private. According to reports, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of a number of captives.

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

Trump exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

Joe Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

His administration's "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to embrace Israel publicly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Commercial Background Assisted Gain Gulf's Backing

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 given Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. He lent American military might to Israel's campaign in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a separate issue completely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials 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 strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, he also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and several Muslim states, such as the Emirates, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

His visits he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year contributed to change his thinking, says an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and Qatar where the leader received repeated calls to bring an end to the war.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat close as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the area.

Assuming Trump's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to pressure the government to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and helped them persuade Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with the militants," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

The reality that the president is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Now Israel has committed to releasing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.

The group will free all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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