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At first, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another intensification that drove the prospect of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and threatened widening the hostilities into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be collapsing.

Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for almost 24 months.

It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be worked out.

But if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that eluded Joe Biden and his administration.

Trump's distinct approach and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this breakthrough.

However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements at play beyond the control of either man.

A Close Relationship 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 the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these positive statements have been matched by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from its former location to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

After Israel began its air strikes against Iran in the summer, the US leader ordered American aircraft to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of support may have given Trump the room to exert more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's envoy, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, even hitting a Christian church, Trump pressured his counterpart to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a degree of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

His administration's "close embrace strategy" held that the US had to support the nation openly in order to enable it to influence the country's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took endangered dividing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the reality that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. He provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatar soil was a different matter completely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

Several Trump officials have informed the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the president to apply full force to finalize an agreement.

The leader's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. He has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The president began both his presidential terms with state visits to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, such as the UAE, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on the city, Trump sat close as the prime minister personally phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

If the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the ability to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Arab rulers may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israelis, and through intermediaries with Hamas," notes an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the combatants has been a problem that many earlier administrations have faced, and he seems to do relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister personally was leverage that he used to his advantage, he adds.

Currently the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees held in its jails and has consented to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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