Israeli headlines were bursting on Wednesday night with the dramatic news of a deal to bring home the remaining hostages and end the war in Gaza.
Over the course of six weeks Hamas will gradually release the “first phase” of hostages: 33 women, children, and elderly. Israeli intelligence believes that most are alive, but some will be returned as corpses. Yet phase two, during which Israeli men would be released, has not even been fully negotiated yet, and there is a disturbing possibility that it will never be….
Even more concerning is that after phase one, Israel will have given up much of its leverage and military momentum. If the deal fails after that point, the children of the Hatikva families might be effectively abandoned in Gaza, permanently. Over the past 24 hours the Hatikva families have been mostly ignored by Israeli media, and they describe the entire situation as a “betrayal.”
Israel is preparing to release approximately 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including those who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre. The IDF will leave the “Netzarim corridor” which separates northern and southern Gaza, allowing Palestinians (and presumably also Hamas) to return to northern Gaza. Most of the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 initiated from northern Gaza, making this area especially sensitive from a security perspective. Israel will also reportedly reduce (though not entirely end) its presence in the “Philadelphi corridor,” which connects Gaza to Egypt, and has long been a source of Iranian resupply to Hamas.
Finally, if we do reach beyond the first and second phases of this deal, Israel will announce a permanent ceasefire and Gaza will be subject to a flood of aid and reconstruction. Reconstruction is expected to be supervised by Qatar (one of Hamas’s main sponsors), Egypt (which is lately rumored to be preparing to open military hostilities against Israel), and the United Nations (which has long supported Hamas’s terror activities through its UNRWA organization).
Crowds took to the streets in Gaza to celebrate the news of a ceasefire, chanting, “We are the people of Muhammad Deif” (one of the architects of the Oct. 7 massacre). And just in case there was any doubt about the prevailing sentiment in the Arab world, the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was recently declared the Arab world’s “Person of the Year” by Egypt’s Hurriyat news network, with 85 percent of the wide-ranging vote.
All that is cause for despair. Why did Israel agree to such a long ceasefire, knowing how hard it will then be politically — with its military momentum gone — to restart hostilities if Hamas violates the agreement? Why has it agreed to even a partial pullback from the Philadelphi Corridor, when it knows Hamas will immediately start again to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza? Why has it agreed to free not just prisoners, but those who were convicted of terrorist murders, including some who took part in the October 7 atrocities?
There is, however, cause for hope.
Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fox claimed Tuesday evening that the current deal “is the same deal as May 27” which Hamas had rejected. Hamas has long insisted that any deal begin with an immediate and permanent end to the war, immediate and complete IDF withdrawal from the entirety of Gaza, and a significant role for Hamas in post-war Gaza, along with binding international guarantees of the same.
In the latest deal, Hamas has achieved none of those goals, and there’s a reason why. Since Hamas rejected a similar deal in May, the IDF has defeated and dismantled the last of Hamas’s 24 formal battalions, it’s leadership, (including Oct. 7 architect Sinwar) has been mostly killed, Hezbollah has been reduced to a shadow of its former self in Lebanon, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad has fallen, Iran has been militarily humiliated, and the United States has elected a new president, Donald Trump, whose incoming national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said just this week, “Gaza has to be fully demilitarized, Hamas has to be destroyed to the point that it cannot reconstitute … Israel has every right to fully protect itself, [and] all of those objectives are still very much in place.” This is a significant departure from the rhetoric of the prior US administration, giving Israelis hope of maintaining its military leverage through phase two and beyond.
There are other benefits to this deal: thousands of IDF reservists desperately need to return to their families and careers, and the IDF needs to redeploy its readiness to face new and emerging challenges (including a rapidly changing Syria and the possibility of a direct confrontation with Iran). Most importantly, Israelis have not been able to rest knowing that one of the principal goals of the war, the return of the hostages, had yet to be accomplished even after more than 400 days….
While the IDF has destroyed more than 80% of the Syrian military arsenal, it still needs to put more resources into guarding the border, given that the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group that is now in charge in Damascus is showing signs — despite soothing assurances to the West from its de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa — of being a jihadist regime.
The IDF has already taken over the Syrian part of the Golan Heights; an IDF outpost is now on top of Mount Hermon. It is clear that the Israelis are putting more men and weapons on the border with Syria, and with the ceasefire will now be able to move troops from Gaza to the Golan. There is a threat to Israel not just from Syrian jihadists, but from the Turkish army, for Erdogan has demanded that the IDF leave all Syrian territory at once. More troops may also be needed to guard the country from Iranian retaliation should Israel decide it can’t afford to wait any longer but must attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Will Hamas scrupulously comply with its commitments under the first phase of the deal? Will the rest of the hostages — how many are still alive? — all be returned during the second phase? Will the terrorist murderers among the 1000 prisoners Israel releases be allowed to remain in Gaza, or will they be sent elsewhere, and if so, to where? How can Israel be assured that Hamas will not continue to rule in Gaza once the IDF has pulled back? Will the rich Arab states of the Gulf demand, as a condition of putting tens of billions into the rebuilding of the Strip — they are the only ones financially capable of doing it — that Hamas give up its role in the government in favor of technocrats chosen by those states?
So much remains up in the air. So many questions left for study and discussion.
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