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Initially, Israel's air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like another intensification that pushed the hope of peace further away.

The attack on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an US partner and risked expanding the conflict into a broader regional conflict.

Negotiations seemed to be in ruins.

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

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

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

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

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

However, as with most foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the control of both leaders.

Strong Ties Which Biden Never Had

Publicly, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.

Trump often states that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as the country's "greatest ever ally in the White House". Moreover these warm words have been matched by deeds.

During his first presidential term, the president moved the US embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to the contested capital and discarded a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under global norms.

When Israel began its air strikes against Iran in June, Trump directed American aircraft to target the Iran's atomic sites with its largest non-nuclear weapons.

These visible shows of backing may have allowed the president the room to exert more pressure on the Israeli government in private. According to reports, the president's envoy, his representative, browbeat the prime minister in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.

After Israel launched strikes against Syrian forces in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, the US president urged his counterpart to change course.

Trump exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the a think tank. "There is no example of an US leader literally telling an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."

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

The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" argued that the United States had to support the nation publicly in order to enable it to moderate the nation's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as sharp divisions within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked dividing his own domestic support, whereas his successor's solid Republican base provided him more room to act.

Ultimately, domestic politics or personal relationships may have had little impact than the simple fact that, throughout Biden's presidency, the Israeli government was unwilling to make peace.

Eight months into Trump's second term, with the Islamic Republic chastened, the militant group to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip in ruins, every one of its key military goals had been accomplished.

Business History Helped Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, prompted Trump to issue an ultimatum to the prime minister. The war had to end.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. He lent US armed support to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, moving him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to conclude the conflict.

A number of administration figures have informed media outlets that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to apply full force to finalize an agreement.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are well documented. He has commercial interests with the emirate and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. This year, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The president's Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between the Jewish state and a number of Arab nations, including the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.

The time he spent in the capitals of the Gulf region in recent months helped change his thinking, according to an expert of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but went to the UAE, the kingdom and the state where he received repeated calls to put a stop to the war.

Within weeks after that Israeli strike on Doha, the president was present nearby as the prime minister personally phoned Qatar to apologise. Subsequently, the prime minister gave approval on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the region.

If the president's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the ability to pressure Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade the group to commit to the deal.

"A key factor that clearly happened was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," notes an analyst of the a research center.

"That made a difference. His ability to do this on his own schedule, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that many previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to handle relatively successfully."

The reality that the president is far better liked in Israel than Netanyahu himself was leverage that Trump used to his benefit, he adds.

Now Israel has committed to freeing more than 1,000 detainees imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a limited pullback from the strip.

The group will free all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

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