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Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas delegation in Doha seemed like another escalation that drove the hope of a ceasefire further away.

This strike on September 9 violated the sovereignty of an American ally and risked expanding the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.

Instead, it turned out to be a pivotal event that culminated in a deal, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

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

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

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

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this success.

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

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

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

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

During his initial time in office, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are against international law, the view under international law.

After the Israeli military began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader directed American aircraft to strike the nation's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

These visible shows of support may have given the president the leeway to apply more pressure on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in return for the freeing of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in July, even bombing a place of worship, the US president pressured Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump displayed a degree of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, according to an analyst 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."

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

The Biden team's "bear hug strategy" held that the United States had to support Israel openly in order to allow it to influence the country's war conduct behind closed doors.

Beneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Each move the leader took endangered fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during his term, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins, all its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Secure Support from Arab States

An Israeli strike in the Qatari capital, which killed a local national but no Hamas officials, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to end.

The US leader had allowed the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in Iran. But an attack on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of Trump officials have told the press that this was a turning point which galvanised the president to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's strong connections with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has business dealings with the emirate and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and the UAE capital.

His normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, according to an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to the country on this regional tour but went to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he received repeated calls to bring an end to the conflict.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat close as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to apologise. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.

If Trump's relationship with his counterpart gave him the ability to influence Israel to strike a deal, his past with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and assisted them convince the group to agree to the deal.

"One of the things that clearly happened was that the US leader gained leverage with the Israeli government, and through intermediaries with the militants," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump seems to do with some success."

The reality that Trump is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that he used to his advantage, the expert continues.

Currently Israel has committed to releasing over a thousand detainees held in Israeli prisons and has consented to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will free all the captives still held, living and dead, taken during the initial October 7 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 fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal