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At first, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like yet another escalation that drove the prospect of peace further away.

This strike on September 9 violated the territorial integrity of an American ally and risked expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.

However, it turned out to be a pivotal event that has led in a deal, announced by Donald Trump, to release all captives still held.

This is a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.

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

The president's distinct approach and key alliances with Israel and the Arab world appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

A Close Relationship That Biden Never Had

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has described him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, Trump moved the American diplomatic mission in Israel from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.

After the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in the summer, the US leader ordered US bombers to target the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

Those visible shows of support may have allowed the president the leeway to exert more influence on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's negotiator, his representative, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel attacked against Syria's military in July, even bombing a Christian church, Trump urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

The leader displayed a level of determination and pressure on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an US leader literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

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

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Each move Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, while Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to act.

Ultimately, internal considerations or personal relationships may have had little impact than the reality that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was unwilling to reach an agreement.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of 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 allowed Israel a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a separate issue entirely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.

Several administration figures have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the president to exert maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.

The leader's strong connections 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 state visits to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.

His visits devoted in the cities of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not visit the country on this regional tour but visited the UAE, the kingdom and Qatar where he heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on the city, the president sat close as Netanyahu personally called the Qatari leadership to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza - one that also had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's relationship with his counterpart gave him the room to influence the government to strike a deal, his history with Arab rulers may have ensured their support, and assisted them persuade Hamas to agree to the arrangement.

"One of the things that evidently occurred was that President Trump developed influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his timing, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have faced, and he appears to handle relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump used to his benefit, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons 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 Hamas attack, which resulted in the loss of over 1,200 Israelis.

An end to the war, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the fatalities of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal