Initially, Israel's aerial attack on the Hamas delegation in Qatar appeared like yet another escalation that drove the hope of a ceasefire out of reach.
This strike on 9 September breached the sovereignty of an US partner and risked widening the hostilities into a region-wide war.
Diplomacy appeared to be collapsing.
Instead, it turned out to be a key moment that has led in a agreement, declared by President Donald Trump, to free all captives still held.
That represents a objective that Trump, and President Joe Biden before him, had sought for almost 24 months.
It is just the initial phase towards a more durable peace, and the details of Hamas disarmament, Gaza governance and full Israeli withdrawal remain to be negotiated.
Yet if this agreement holds, it could be Donald Trump's signature achievement of his return to office - one that eluded Biden and his diplomatic team.
The president's unique style and crucial relationships with the Israeli government and the Middle Eastern nations seem to have played a role in this success.
However, as with many foreign policy wins, there were also elements at play beyond the influence of either man.
Publicly, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are consistently friendly.
Trump likes to say that the nation has no better friend, and the Israeli leader has described him as Israel's "greatest ever ally in the White House". And these positive statements have been backed up by deeds.
Throughout his initial time in office, Trump relocated the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and abandoned a long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal, the position under international law.
When the Israeli military began its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in June, the US leader directed US bombers to target the Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities with its most powerful conventional bombs.
These visible shows of backing may have given the president the room to apply more pressure on the Israeli government in private. As per sources, the president's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, pressured the prime minister in the latter part of the year into agreeing to a temporary ceasefire in return for the release of some hostages.
After Israeli forces attacked against Syria's military in the summer, including hitting a Christian church, the US president urged Netanyahu to change course.
Trump exhibited a degree of determination and insistence on an Israeli prime minister that is virtually unprecedented, says an analyst of the a think tank. "It's unheard of of an American president directly instructing an Israeli prime minister that they must agree or else."
Joe Biden's connection with Netanyahu's government was consistently more strained.
The Biden team's "close embrace strategy" argued that the US had to embrace the nation openly in order to allow it to influence the country's war conduct in private.
Underneath this was Biden's nearly half-century of backing for Israel, as well as deep disagreements within his Democratic coalition over the Gaza War. Each move Biden took risked dividing his own domestic support, while Trump's loyal conservative voters gave him more flexibility to manoeuvre.
In the end, internal considerations or individual ties may have had little impact than the reality that, during Biden's presidency, Israel was unwilling to reach an agreement.
Several months into his new administration, with Iran chastened, the militant group to its northern border significantly reduced and the coastal strip devastated, every one of its major strategy objectives had been achieved.
The Israeli missile attack in the Qatari capital, which resulted in the death of a local national but not the intended targets, prompted Trump to issue an final demand to the prime minister. The war had to end.
The US leader had allowed Israel a significant latitude in Gaza. The president lent American military might to Israeli operations in the neighboring country. But an strike on Qatar soil was a separate issue entirely, moving him closer to the Arab position on how best to end the war.
A number of Trump officials have told media outlets that this was a decisive moment which galvanised the leader to apply maximum pressure to get a peace deal done.
The leader's strong connections with the Gulf states are widely known. He has business dealings with Qatar and the UAE. He began each of his administrations with official trips to Saudi Arabia. This year, he also visited in Qatar and the UAE capital.
His Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim states, including the Emirates, was the biggest foreign policy success of his first term.
The time devoted in the capitals of the Arabian Peninsula in recent months helped shift his perspective, says an expert of the a policy institute. The US president did not travel to Israel on this Middle East trip but visited the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the state where he received repeated calls to put a stop to the conflict.
Within weeks after that attack on the city, the president was present close as Netanyahu himself called Qatar to apologise. And later that day, the prime minister gave approval on Trump's comprehensive proposal for Gaza - one that additionally had the support of key Muslim nations in the area.
Assuming Trump's relationship with his counterpart provided him the room to influence Israel to reach an agreement, his history with Muslim leaders may have secured their backing, and helped them convince Hamas to agree to the arrangement.
"A key factor that clearly happened was that President Trump developed leverage with the Israeli government, and indirectly with Hamas," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"This was crucial. The capacity to do this on his own schedule, and avoid yielding to the demands of the combatants has been a challenge that lot of previous presidents have struggled with, and he appears to handle relatively successfully."
The reality that Trump is much more popular in the nation than the prime minister personally was leverage that he employed to his benefit, he adds.
Currently Israel has committed to releasing more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in its jails and has agreed to a limited pullback from Gaza.
The group will release all the captives still held, both alive and deceased, taken in the initial October 7 Hamas attack, which caused the death of over 1,200 Israelis.
An end to the war, which has resulted in the destruction of the territory and the deaths of more than 67,000 {Palestinians|Pal
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