A ceasefire deal has been reached in Gaza.
Long-running negotiations among Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, Qataris, and Egyptians yielded an agreement on Wednesday that will, in the coming days, at least temporarily end the fighting in Gaza and return some Israeli hostages home. The agreement also contains a framework for making the short-term ceasefire permanent — parameters that, if honored, would finally bring an end to the bloodiest chapter in the long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In theory, this is all to the good. It’s long been clear that the Gaza war is a disaster both in humanitarian and political terms: a mass slaughter of Palestinians that has made the prospect of a true Israeli-Palestinian peace even less likely than ever. Gazans will now have a chance to begin rebuilding their lives after unthinkable devastation; Israelis will be able to welcome home at least some of the hostages who had been suffering in Hamas cells.
But agreements like these are never guaranteed. There are real reasons to think that the deal might turn into something permanent — but also good reasons to believe that it might fail, allowing the carnage to start up once again.
What we know — and what we don’t — about the deal’s terms
Because the full text of the deal has not yet been made public, we can’t be sure about every single detail in the agreement. But reporting on the deal’s terms, which appears to mostly track the Biden administration’s May ceasefire proposal, has converged on some key points.
To begin with, the deal is split into multiple phases. The first phase covers a temporary pause in fighting, the second covers a permanent end to the war, and the third covers a comprehensive agreement for Gaza’s political and security future.
These latter two phases, at present, remain aspirational. The only binding part of the deal at present is the first phase, which lasts six weeks beginning on Sunday.
During this time, both Israel and Hamas will cease combat operations. Israeli troops will withdraw from Gaza’s main population centers, pulling back to the Philadelphi corridor on Gaza’s border with Egypt and a so-called buffer zone on Gazan territory bordering Israel. The exact size of this buffer zone is not yet clear.
There will also be a prisoner exchange. CNN reports that Hamas will release 33 out of the nearly 100 remaining Israeli hostages who have yet to be released, rescued, or confirmed dead. The New York Times reports that the hostages released are likely to be “women, older men, and ill.” There are also reports that Hamas will confirm which hostages remain alive — and which ones do not.
In exchange, Israel will release several hundred Palestinian women and children from Israeli detention, likely including some who have been convicted of terrorism and murder. Those prisoners will have some restrictions on where they can go after release; some reports suggest they will be sent to Gaza and barred from the West Bank, while others suggest they’ll be barred from the Palestinian territories entirely.
The deal will also include a significant increase in humanitarian aid provision for Gaza. Again, the exact numbers and nature of that aid — who will be providing it, what kinds of needs it will meet — have not yet been made clear.
It’s possible that so many details remain vague because they have not yet been fully hammered out. In a Wednesday afternoon statement after the news of a deal broke, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “several items in the framework have yet to be finalized; we hope that the details will be finalized tonight.”
Is a permanent end to the war coming?
When you look at the specific contours of the agreement, what we have so far looks less like an agreement to stop fighting and more like an agreement to pause the fighting while a more permanent solution might be found. Negotiators looking to nail down an agreement for phase two — a permanent ceasefire — will be working on a six-week clock. If they do not get a deal by then or extend the temporary pause, the fighting is all but certain to begin again.
The odds of these various outcomes — ceasefire, protracted negotiations, or a return to war — are hard to know now. But there are a few factors that are worth considering.
First is the nature of Netanyahu’s coalition. The prime minister’s government depends on continued support from the extreme-right Religious Zionism slate, which strongly opposes any permanent end to the war.
At present, there is no indication that faction’s leaders — cabinet members Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir — are going to be able to stop the deal’s first phase. But they will likely pose major problems in transitioning to a permanent ceasefire. In fact, one report in the Israeli press suggests Netanyahu has already promised Smotrich he has no intention of entering phase two of the deal. Whether that’s true or not is hard to tell; Netanyahu has a habit of telling people exactly what they want to hear — and a dubious record of following through on it.
Second is Hamas’s internal politics.
While the militant group’s army remains operational, with US estimates suggesting it has recruited roughly as many fighters during the current war as it has lost, almost all of its top-level leadership has been killed. The result is Hamas’s current crop of decisionmakers are new and relatively untested in negotiations; it’s unclear exactly how they are thinking about their interests or even the extent to which they agree with each other on what those interests are.
Third is the Donald Trump factor.
Multiple reports suggest that the president-elect’s personal desire for a deal played a positive role in the talks, putting pressure on Netanyahu — who looked like the primary roadblock to a deal — into agreeing to the phase one deal. However, we do not know the exact nature of Trump’s interest: whether he wants the war to be done permanently, or just wanted a temporary ceasefire he could brag about upon taking office. The incoming US president’s position going forward will likely play a pivotal role, given Israel’s reliance on the United States.
Fourth, and finally, is the war-weariness among both populations.
Gazans have been so brutalized — around 90 percent of the entire population displaced — that they just want the conflict to end. And polls have shown for months that Israelis support a negotiated end to the war. These dynamics will create political costs for leaders on both sides to restarting the fighting, something that might weigh on Netanyahu. That’s especially true given that Israeli elections are scheduled for next year (and likely coming sooner than that).
It is good, then, that both Israelis and Gazans appear to be getting at least a temporary respite from the past year-plus of horrors. While there is no certainty of a lasting peace, there’s more hope for it than there was before.
