Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas militant negotiating team in Doha seemed like another intensification that drove the prospect of peace out of reach.
The attack on September 9 breached the sovereignty of an US partner and risked widening the conflict into a region-wide war.
Diplomacy seemed to be collapsing.
Instead, it proved to be a pivotal event that culminated in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.
This is a goal that he, and President Joe Biden previously, had sought for nearly two years.
This marks just the first step towards a lasting resolution, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout remain to be worked out.
But if this deal holds, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that eluded Joe Biden and his diplomatic team.
Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have contributed in this success.
However, as with most diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the control of both leaders.
Publicly, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all smiles.
The president likes to say that Israel has no greater ally, and Netanyahu has called Trump as Israel's "most supportive friend in the White House". Moreover these positive statements have been matched by actions.
During his first presidential term, Trump moved the US embassy in the country from its former location to the contested capital and abandoned a long-held US position that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are against international law, the position under global norms.
When the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader directed American aircraft to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.
These public demonstrations of support may have given the president the leeway to apply more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in late 2024 into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of a number of captives.
When Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a place of worship, Trump urged his counterpart to alter tactics.
Trump exhibited a level of will and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is rarely seen, says Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli leader that they must agree or else."
Biden's relationship with the Israeli administration was consistently more strained.
His administration's "close embrace approach" argued that the US had to embrace the nation publicly in order to allow it to influence the country's military actions behind closed doors.
Beneath this was Biden's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the conflict in Gaza. Every step Biden took endangered dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's solid Republican base provided him more flexibility to act.
In the end, domestic politics or individual ties may have had little impact than the simple fact that, during Biden's presidency, 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 greatly diminished and Gaza devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.
The Israeli missile attack in Doha, which killed a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led the president to issue an final demand to Netanyahu. 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 Israeli operations in Iran. But an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, pushing him closer to the stance of Arab nations on how best to end the war.
Several Trump officials have told the press that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply maximum pressure to finalize an agreement.
This US president's close ties with the Gulf states are well documented. Trump has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also visited in Doha and Abu Dhabi.
The president's normalization agreements, which normalised relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations, such as the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.
The time he spent in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula earlier this year contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to the country on this Middle East trip but visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the state where he heard consistent appeals to bring an end to the war.
Less than a month after that attack on the city, Trump sat close as Netanyahu himself phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on the president's comprehensive proposal for the territory - one that additionally had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.
Assuming the president's relationship with his counterpart provided him the ability to pressure the government to strike a deal, his past with Muslim leaders may have secured their support, and assisted them convince the group to commit to the deal.
"One of the things that clearly happened was that President Trump gained leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," notes an analyst of the a research center.
"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his timing, and not succumb to the desires of the warring sides has been a problem that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and Trump seems to do relatively successfully."
The fact that Trump is much more popular in Israel than the prime minister personally was leverage that he employed to his advantage, he adds.
Currently Israel has committed to freeing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons and has agreed to a partial withdrawal from Gaza.
Hamas will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, captured in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.
A conclusion to the conflict, which has resulted in the destruction of Gaza and the fatalities of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal
