The announcement of the ceasefire deal signed by Israel and Hamas in Cairo last week has been widely welcomed in Gaza, Israel and the wider world. The first phase envisages that Israeli forces in Gaza will withdraw to an agreed-upon line for a hostage release, following which all Israeli hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned within 72 hours. This is to be followed by the release of 250 of the 303 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli prisons, along with about 1,700 Palestinians detained in Gaza since October 7th, 2023.
The Hamas leadership has agreed to the release of all hostages, but already there are disputes regarding prisoner release, most notably in the case of Marwan Barghouti.
Barghouti is the most senior Palestinian leader in jail and the most popular, frequently referred to in the local media as the “Palestinian Mandela”. He was jailed for five consecutive life sentences and 40 years, following his conviction for five murders in a trial that rights groups have described as flawed. Barghouti is seen as a likely successor to Mahmoud Abbas, the 88-year-old head of the Palestinian Authority, and enjoys real popular support in Gaza and the West Bank. His name was removed from the list of those due for release by the Israeli authorities.
The ceasefire plan agreed in Cairo is the latest in a number of initiatives to stop the war and bears some resemblance to earlier efforts. Just six weeks after the fighting began, Israel and Hamas agreed a four-day truce in late November 2023. After weeks of negotiations led by Qatar, the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed a deal in which 110 hostages were freed and 240 Palestinian prisoners released, all of them women and children. The truce was extended to seven days, at which point Israel resumed fighting. In May 2024, Egyptian and American officials put together a plan that was accepted by Ismail Haniyeh, then leader of Hamas, and envisaged a three-phase process.
The US, Egypt, Qatar and the UN undertook to guarantee the deal. However, Israel rejected it and soon after launched its invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza.
Then in January of this year, Israel and Hamas agreed to halt the fighting and exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, following months of negotiations. Again, the deal was structured in three phases, but negotiations on the second phase – which was to lead to a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza – never began. A wave of Israeli strikes on March 18th killed hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza and ended the ceasefire. In late August, an investigative programme on Israel’s Channel 13 reported that Israel had blocked ceasefire agreements on seven occasions during the conflict, with Netanyahu chiefly responsible and often bowing to pressure from hardline ministers in his coalition government.
According to Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the US State Department under Joe Biden, Netanyahu told Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken: “We are going to be fighting this war for decades. That’s the way it is, that’s the way it’s going to be.”
But now Netanyahu has agreed under pressure to Trump’s current plan. He has presented this in terms of the achievement of Israel’s core objectives: the return of all of the hostages and the disarmament of Hamas.
For Hamas, different calculations are at play. The movement has been severely depleted by the Israeli assault over the past two years and many now question what armed struggle has achieved at such cost to Gaza. There is no prospect of a repeat of the attack launched on October 7th, 2023, while its regional allies, notably Iran and Hizbullah, are also weakened by Israeli attack. On the other hand, Hamas can claim victory by the very fact of its survival, while some Palestinian commentators suggest that even those critical of Hamas in the recent past now support it.
However, while there are high hopes that the first phase of Trump’s plan will come to fruition, there are significant obstacles to the plan’s 20 points. Among these are the extent to which Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza, which in turn is closely linked to the highly contentious issue of the “decommissioning” of Hamas weapons. During the first phase of the plan, the IDF will still control nearly 60 per cent of Gaza. During the second phase, Israel will retain a “security buffer zone”, amounting to more than 17 per cent.
The plan also requires the demilitarisation of Hamas.
This is enormously challenging for Hamas and for many others. Even among those who are critical of the organisation and of the October 7th attacks, there is widespread fear that if Hamas is crushed, Israel will occupy Gaza indefinitely without real opposition from the international community.
Hamas negotiators have reportedly shown a willingness to decommission “offensive” weapons while retaining “defensive” weapons, such as rifles and anti-tank missiles. This is partly in case Israel reneges on its promise to withdraw from Gaza, but also to enforce compliance with the deal among its own members and those from more hardline groups.
In addition, some fear that the complete disarmament of Hamas will create a security vacuum to be filled by Salafist or jihadist groups or by criminal gangs.
How the tension between Israeli demands for complete demilitarisation of Gaza and Hamas’s desire to retain at least some of its military capacity will be resolved is unclear. But it is also central to the future course of events.
The plan is also vague, to say the least, on the issues of the future reconstruction and governance of Gaza. It states that Hamas must have no role in postwar Gaza. However, the Palestinian Authority is mentioned only in terms of the need for its reform. At the heart of the plan is the so-called Board of Peace, with Trump at its head, but with no specified membership other than the controversial inclusion of Tony Blair.
Palestinian critics have suggested that it bears similarities to the Coalition Provisional Authority established in Iraq in the aftermath of the US-led invasion in 2003, which was widely criticised for corruption and lack of transparency. For the Palestinian Authority there is concern that this will leave it with little or no role in Gaza, and deepen the existing separation of Gaza and the West Bank, which it controls.
The Trump plan makes no reference to the issue of reconnecting the two territories, which is central to any prospect of an independent Palestinian state, and none to ending the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is essential for its future development.
