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Initially, the Israeli aerial attack on the Hamas militant delegation in Qatar appeared like yet another intensification that pushed the prospect of a ceasefire further away.

The attack on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.

Negotiations appeared to be collapsing.

Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that has led in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.

This is a goal that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.

It is just the first step towards a more durable peace, and the specifics of Hamas disarmament, administering Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal are still to be negotiated.

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

The president's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations appear to have played a role in this breakthrough.

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

Strong Ties That Eluded Biden

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

Trump likes to say that Israel has no better friend, and Netanyahu has called Trump as the country's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". And these warm words have been backed up by deeds.

Throughout his initial time in office, the president moved the US embassy in the country from its former location to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are against international law, the view under international law.

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

These public demonstrations of support may have allowed Trump the room to exert more influence on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, the president's envoy, his representative, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into accepting a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of some hostages.

When Israel launched strikes against Syria's military in July, including hitting a place of worship, the US president urged Netanyahu to alter tactics.

Trump exhibited a level of determination and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, according to Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There is no example of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."

Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was consistently more tenuous.

The Biden team's "bear hug approach" argued that the United States had to embrace Israel publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's war conduct in private.

Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for the state, as well as deep disagreements within his political base over the Gaza War. Every step the leader took risked fracturing his own domestic support, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to manoeuvre.

Ultimately, domestic politics or individual ties may have had less importance than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to make peace.

Several months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, every one of its key military goals had been achieved.

Business History Assisted Gain Support from Arab States

The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an ultimatum to Netanyahu. The war had to stop.

Trump had given the Israeli military a relatively free hand in Gaza. The president provided American military might to Israel's campaign in the neighboring country. But an attack on Qatari territory was a different matter entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.

A number of administration figures have told the press that this was a decisive moment which motivated the leader to exert maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.

This US president's close ties with the Arab monarchies are widely known. Trump has commercial interests with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began each of his administrations with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also stopped in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

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

The time he spent in the cities of the Gulf region earlier this year helped change his thinking, says Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations. The US president did not travel to Israel on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the leader heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the conflict.

Less than a month after that attack on Doha, Trump sat nearby as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the Israeli leader signed off on the president's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of key Muslim nations in the area.

If the president's relationship with his counterpart gave him the ability to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.

"A key factor that evidently occurred was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with the militants," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"That made a difference. The capacity to do this on his timing, and not succumb to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that many previous presidents have faced, and he seems to handle with some success."

The reality that Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu personally was leverage that Trump employed to his advantage, the expert continues.

Now the Israeli government has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians held in its jails and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from the strip.

The group will release all the captives still held, living and dead, taken in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.

An end to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal