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Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha seemed like another escalation that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.

This strike on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an American ally and risked widening the conflict into a region-wide war.

Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.

However, it proved to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, announced by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

This is a goal that he, and Joe Biden before him, had pursued for nearly two years.

This marks just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.

Yet if this deal stands, it could be Trump's signature achievement of his second term - one that eluded Joe Biden and his administration.

Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this success.

However, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also factors involved beyond the control of either man.

A Close Relationship Which Eluded Biden

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump often states that Israel has no greater ally, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his first presidential term, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and abandoned a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the position under global norms.

When Israel began its bombing campaign against Iran in June, the US leader ordered American aircraft to strike the Iran's atomic sites with its most powerful conventional bombs.

Those public demonstrations of support may have allowed the president the leeway to exert more pressure on Israel behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a halt in fighting in return for the release of some hostages.

After Israeli forces launched strikes against Syria's military in the summer, including bombing a place of worship, Trump urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace approach" argued that the United States had to embrace Israel publicly in order to enable it to influence the nation's military actions in private.

Underneath this was the president's nearly half-century of backing for the state, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took endangered dividing his own political backing, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters provided him more room to manoeuvre.

In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout his term, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic weakened, the militant group to its immediate north significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but not the intended targets, prompted the president to deliver an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had given Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. He lent American military might to Israeli operations in Iran. However an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, moving him towards the Arab position on how best to conclude the conflict.

Several Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised 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. Trump has commercial interests with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the most significant foreign policy success of his initial presidency.

His visits devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, according to Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he received consistent appeals to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president sat nearby as the prime minister himself phoned Qatar to express regret. Subsequently, the Israeli leader gave approval on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

If Trump's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to pressure the government to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their backing, and assisted them convince Hamas to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained influence with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the a research center.

"This was crucial. The capacity to achieve this on his timing, and not succumb to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that many earlier administrations have struggled with, and he appears to do relatively successfully."

The fact that the president is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister himself was an advantage that Trump employed to his advantage, he adds.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to releasing over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken during the original 7 October assault, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal