After the ceasefire: What's next for Israel and Gaza?
Gaza today is unrecognizable. Much of it has been reduced to rubble by Israel’s onslaught and more than 46,000 people have been killed. Nine in ten residents have been displaced, forced into temporary shelters with woefully inadequate sanitary facilities, food and water
The Gaza ceasefire marks a tentative end to a 15-month conflict that's left tens of thousands dead, far more homeless and Israel's enemies across the Mideast reeling. But it's a fragile reprieve.
The deal, which was being finalized Wednesday night, is the latest result of the Trump effect. The incoming US president has shaken global politics even before he takes office. Outgoing President Joe Biden can also claim credit for helping deliver a pact he originally outlined more than six months ago.
Since then, an enormous amount has happened, much of it by Israel's hand: Hamas's top leadership was assassinated, its Lebanese ally Hezbollah was crippled and their patron Iran humbled, followed by the collapse of another Tehran ally: the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.
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All that left Hamas—which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 with the hope of inspiring others to help it strike more blows against the Jewish state—isolated. Its effort to change the regional order worked, just not as it planned. Instead, Israel emerged stronger, though the deadly war deepened its international isolation, battered its economy and killed hundreds of troops, while not quite achieving the defeat of Hamas that it had promised.
While the agreement is expected to bring back about three dozen hostages taken by Hamas in the attack, it falls short of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's long-stated goal of demolishing the group's grip on Gaza and provides no answer to the question of what will replace Hamas in the enclave.
Under the deal, Israel agrees to pull its troops from densely populated areas and allow in hundreds of trucks a day of desperately needed aid. But the pact, which still needs Israeli government approval, could implode within six weeks when the first phase—so far the only part that's actually agreed—ends. That would leave more hostages behind and 2 million Gazans mostly homeless and struggling to withstand the winter.
"This accord is not going to end the war in Gaza, nor is it going to free all the hostages," said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department Middle East official and now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "This is a limited agreement," he said, that will "begin to create a predictable and stable environment where international assistance can be surged rather than just dribbled into Gaza."
For the US, even a tentative agreement allows Donald Trump to claim an early success and move on to his broader ambitions for the region, in particular a political deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But without a lasting solution in Gaza, that could prove a tall order.
It was at a meeting Saturday that Trump's special envoy, real estate investor and presidential golf buddy Steve Witkoff, interrupted Netanyahu's observance of the Jewish Sabbath to deliver a blunt message: the incoming US president wanted a deal before his inauguration next week.
Under the agreement, Israel is expected to do things many of its politicians swore it wouldn't—release large numbers of Palestinians who've murdered Israelis and step back from its 15-month effort to destroy Hamas root and branch. US pressure, as well as Israel's own domestic political and economic concerns, shifted the balance for Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, Trump's threat that there would be "all Hell to pay" if the hostages weren't released by the time of his inauguration also clearly weighed on key mediator Qatar, which pressed Hamas—designated a terrorist group by the US and other governments—to ease up its demands.
What is agreed so far is that hostages considered most vulnerable—women, ill, injured and older—will go free in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Of the roughly 250 hostages taken on Oct. 7, some 98 remain in Gaza but only half of that number are thought to be alive; the first releases will include some of the dead. Hamas will hold onto Israeli men, soldiers and civilians, until the later stages of the deal.
The real question is what the two sides will decide about the following phase when Hamas wants a full Israeli withdrawal so it can resume power, and Israel wants to remove Hamas entirely from authority.
That's the core disagreement that long prevented the sides from signing a deal. The fact that they've done so now—without an ironclad guarantee of an eventual full withdrawal—says something about Hamas's concession.
Hamas agreed to this deal because it wants its prisoners out, it wants massive aid which it will try to control, and it hopes that once Israel has stopped its military actions for a ceasefire, its troops will not return.
But after the first phase, tougher negotiations will begin. Israel wants a wide buffer zone within the strip and to keep its troops along the border with Egypt, both demands Hamas rejects. And it wants to replace Hamas with something it hasn't yet figured out.
"It's the end of the beginning, but we're some way away from it being the beginning of the end," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Lots can go wrong, both with the implementation of phase 1 and the negotiation of phase 2.''
Gaza today is unrecognizable. Much of it has been reduced to rubble by Israel's onslaught and more than 46,000 people have been killed, according to Hamas authorities. Nine in ten residents have been displaced, forced into temporary shelters with woefully inadequate sanitary facilities, food and water. Hunger is a constant presence. A society that once boasted universities, hospitals and cultural institutions as well as a literacy rate above 90% for both men and women is now a moonscape of collapsing buildings filled with the wounded and sick.
Ordinary Gazans say they're desperate for the ceasefire so they can get food and medicine and begin to imagine life without daily bombardment, fear and loss. They curse Israel but some also openly blame Hamas for having spurned the deal put on the table last spring.
"At the time, Hamas said it's not going ahead unless Israel withdraws from Gaza fully," said Saed Hamouda, a Gaza resident. "They have given up on that demand now and after what? After we lost Rafah, the north, and many families."
Despite the beating it has taken and the anger of some locals, Hamas remains the strip's central governing authority, as it has been since 2007. It continues to run the streets and schools and police force, although criminal gangs pose a serious challenge. It's also refilling its slain ranks with young volunteers.
"Each time Israel completes its military operations and pulls back, Hamas militants regroup and re-emerge because there's nothing else to fill the void," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday. "Indeed, we assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost."
"That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war," he said.
The top US diplomat warned the Israelis to make the difficult domestic political concessions necessary to secure a permanent truce in Gaza, and outlined some post-war plans he's discussed with Arab leaders in the region—including an interim security force composed of vetted Palestinian and foreign personnel. He also said Israel must accept the eventuality of an independent Palestinian state, something the government has said it won't do after Hamas's attacks.
Israel, which disagrees with the claim that Hamas is rapidly replacing its troops, may eventually treat Gaza as it does parts of the occupied West Bank—sending in troops for short operations to reduce hostile forces. That's hardly a scenario that would make rebuilding the coastal strip easier or do much to lure Gulf Arab states to spend money doing so.
At the same time, the Israeli economy is desperate for some relief. Last year, the government borrowed a record amount to fund the war. Construction, hospitality and many other sectors are suffering. When a deal began to appear likely, assets including the shekel, rose.
Israelis worry about their global reputation tarnished by the war. The once-plucky Startup Nation, as it was dubbed, is now shunned in many quarters, its leaders facing international arrest warrants, its scholars turned away from conferences, its writers boycotted. A deal could start to ease those things.
In addition, Netanyahu, the longest-serving premier in his country's history, no longer fears that his government will fall apart over this deal, something his far-right coalition partners consistently threatened. In recent months, Netanyahu, 75, broadened his coalition, making it hard for National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a hardline advocate of annexing Palestinian land, to bring down the government.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also fiercely opposes the deal but has made clear he will not walk out of the government. This may be partly because he hopes that by cooperating with Trump, he will get support for his goal to spread Israeli sovereignty over more of the West Bank. Trump's incoming ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is a supporter of such a move, which would make a Palestinian state—a goal of much of the world—much harder to establish.
There is also the fact that Israeli support for continuing the war is flagging. Last year, many polls that asked them to choose between victory over Hamas and returning the hostages found a majority for finishing the war. Now it is reversed with a strong majority favoring hostage return as the top priority and critics blaming Netanyahu for not doing the deal sooner.
Signs across the country that a year ago declared in Hebrew, "Together we will win" have been replaced in some quarters with those that scream "End this Fuc*ing War" in English, written just like that. While abroad the concerns are focused on suffering Palestinian civilians, domestically they're largely about what the war does to Israel.
More than 400 soldiers have been killed in the war and many Israelis aren't persuaded anymore that they're dying in a cause that can be won the way the government has promised. They're worried that troops in Gaza are just sitting ducks. No public event—or even many private ones—takes place without heartrending reference to the urgency of bringing home the hostages.
Netanyahu and his closest aides have long asserted that Hamas needs to be fully defeated to send a message to Israel's enemies: anyone who carries out an attack as savage as the one of Oct. 7, 2023 has written his own death warrant, full stop.
But Israel has efficiently taken down its opponents who joined in the war to support Hamas. This past fall, Israel said its fighter planes took out much of Iran's air defense system and missile production capacity, most of Hezbollah's long-range missiles and assassinated the top ranks of Hezbollah and Hamas. Shortly thereafter, the Iran-backed Syrian government fell.
This has led some in Israel to say that eliminating Hamas is no longer the central goal it once was and that attention now needs to turn to building relations with Saudi Arabia and maintaining close ties with the US. Others continue to insist that the war must end in absolute victory.
Netanyahu has a little less than two years before he has to call elections. They will likely hinge, at least partly, on how that debate gets settled.
— With assistance from Iain Marlow, Dan Williams, Fares Alghoul, Julia Janicki, Tom Fevrier, and Rachel Lavin
