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At first, Israel's air strike on the Hamas delegation in Qatar seemed like yet another intensification that pushed the prospect of peace out of reach.

This strike on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and threatened widening the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that has led 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 pursued for nearly two years.

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

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

The president's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have contributed 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

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

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

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under global norms.

After Israel began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader directed American aircraft to target the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of support may have given the president the room to apply more influence on Israel in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of some hostages.

When Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in the summer, even bombing a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.

Trump displayed a level of will and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the US had to support Israel publicly in order to enable it to influence the nation's war conduct behind closed doors.

Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move the leader took risked dividing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with Iran weakened, Hezbollah to its northern border greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Commercial Background Helped Secure Gulf's Backing

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, led the president to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to stop.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. He provided US armed support to Israeli operations in Iran. However an attack on Qatar soil was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several administration figures have told the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert full force to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. 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. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

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

The time he spent in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat close as the prime minister himself called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that also had the support of influential Arab states in the area.

If Trump's alliance with Netanyahu gave him the ability to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the arrangement.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and he appears to do with some success."

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

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

The group will free all the remaining hostages, both alive and deceased, taken in the initial October 7 assault, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the destruction of the territory and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal