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Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas militant delegation in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that pushed the hope of peace out of reach.

This strike on 9 September violated the sovereignty of an US partner and risked widening the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

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

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and complete Israeli pullout remain to be negotiated.

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

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this success.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the influence of both leaders.

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

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

Trump often states that Israel has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called Trump as the country's "greatest ever ally in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by actions.

Throughout his first presidential term, the president moved the American diplomatic mission in the country from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under global norms.

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

These visible shows of backing may have given Trump the room to apply more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

When Israeli forces launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including hitting a place of worship, the US president pressured his counterpart to change course.

The leader exhibited a level of will and pressure 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 directly instructing an Israeli leader that you're going to have to comply or else."

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

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

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took risked fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base gave him more flexibility to act.

In the end, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had less importance than the reality that, during his term, Israel was not ready to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a local national but not the intended targets, prompted the president to issue an final demand to the prime minister. Hostilities had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in the territory. He provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving him towards the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

A number of Trump officials have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to exert full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with state visits to Saudi Arabia. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit the country on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, Trump sat nearby as the prime minister personally called the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

Assuming Trump's alliance with Netanyahu provided him the ability to influence the government to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the desires of the warring sides has been a challenge that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle with some success."

The reality that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump used to his benefit, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has committed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 assault, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

A conclusion to the conflict, which has led to the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal