Initially, the Israeli air strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar appeared like another intensification that drove the hope of peace further away.
This strike on September 9 breached the territorial integrity of an American ally and threatened widening the conflict into a region-wide war.
Diplomacy seemed to be in ruins.
Instead, it proved to be a key moment that culminated in a agreement, declared by Donald Trump, to release all remaining hostages.
That represents a goal that Trump, and Joe Biden previously, had pursued for nearly two years.
This marks just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of disarming Hamas, Gaza governance and complete Israeli pullout are still to be negotiated.
Yet if this agreement stands, it could be Trump's defining accomplishment of his second term - one that eluded Biden and his administration.
Trump's unique style and key alliances with Israel and the Arab world seem to have contributed in this success.
However, as with many diplomatic achievements, there were also elements involved beyond the control of both leaders.
Publicly, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.
Trump likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has called him as Israel's "most supportive friend in the US presidency". Moreover these warm words have been matched by actions.
Throughout his initial time in office, Trump relocated the American diplomatic mission in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and discarded a traditional American stance that Jewish communities in the occupied territories are illegal, the position under international law.
After Israel began its air strikes against the Islamic Republic in June, Trump ordered US bombers to strike the nation's nuclear enrichment facilities with its largest non-nuclear weapons.
Those public demonstrations of backing may have given Trump the room to exert more influence on the Israeli government behind the scenes. According to reports, the president's negotiator, his representative, browbeat Netanyahu in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a halt in fighting in exchange for the freeing of some hostages.
After Israel attacked against Syria's military in July, including bombing a place of worship, Trump urged Netanyahu to change course.
Trump exhibited a degree of will and insistence on an Israel's leader that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's unheard of of an American president literally telling an Israeli prime minister that you're going to have to comply or else."
Joe Biden's connection with the Israeli administration was consistently more tenuous.
His administration's "close embrace approach" held that the United States had to embrace the nation publicly in order to enable it to influence the country's military actions in private.
Underneath this was the president's decades-long of support for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Every step Biden took endangered fracturing his own political backing, whereas Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more room to act.
Ultimately, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, during his term, the Israeli government was not ready to make peace.
Eight months into his new administration, with the Islamic Republic weakened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and the coastal strip devastated, all its key military goals had been achieved.
An Israeli strike in Doha, which resulted in the death of a Qatari citizen but no Hamas officials, led Trump to deliver an final demand to Netanyahu. The war had to end.
Trump had allowed the Israeli military a significant latitude in Gaza. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. However an strike on Qatari territory was a different matter completely, 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 galvanised the leader to apply full force to finalize an agreement.
The leader's close ties with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with the emirate and the United Arab Emirates. He began both his presidential terms with official trips to the kingdom. Recently, Trump also visited in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
The president's normalization agreements, which established ties between the Jewish state and several Muslim states, including the UAE, was the most significant diplomatic achievement of his initial presidency.
His visits he spent in the cities of the Gulf region in recent months contributed to shift his perspective, says Ed Husain of the a policy institute. Trump did not visit the country on this regional tour but visited the United Arab Emirates, the kingdom and the state where the leader heard repeated calls to put a stop to the war.
Within weeks after that attack on Doha, the president sat close as the prime minister himself phoned the Qatari leadership to express regret. And later that day, the prime minister signed off on Trump's 20-point peace plan for the territory - one that also had the backing of influential Arab states in the region.
If Trump's relationship with Netanyahu provided him the room to influence Israel to strike a deal, his history with Muslim leaders may have ensured their support, and helped them persuade the group to commit to the arrangement.
"One of the things that evidently occurred was that the US leader developed leverage with the Israelis, and indirectly with Hamas," says an analyst of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"That made a difference. His ability to achieve this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the demands of the warring sides has been a challenge that lot of earlier administrations have faced, and Trump appears to do with some success."
The fact that Trump is far better liked in the nation than the prime minister personally was an advantage that Trump used to his advantage, he adds.
Currently the Israeli government has agreed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has consented to a limited pullback from Gaza.
Hamas will release all the remaining hostages, living and dead, captured in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the loss of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens.
An end to the war, which has led to the devastation of the territory and the deaths of over 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal
A seasoned gambling analyst with over a decade of experience in casino gaming and slot machine strategy development.
