The four-day ceasefire and hostage agreement tentatively reached between Israel and Hamas is a breakthrough following weeks of negotiations brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States. Despite this, analysts highly doubt this brief truce will lead to a long-lasting ceasefire or any significant cessation of hostilities in a war nearing its fiftieth day.
Reached on Wednesday, the agreement aims to facilitate Hamas’ release of 50 hostages, civilian women and children, currently held in the Gaza Strip, and Israel releasing approximately three times as many Palestinian women and children in its prisons.
Israel has further clarified that it will extend the ceasefire for each day Hamas agrees to release an additional 10 hostages it is holding. Hamas kidnapped as many as 240 Israeli and foreign civilians from Southern Israel during its unprecedented Oct. 7 attack that sparked this present war, the deadliest Gaza has ever seen.
The ceasefire took effect on Friday, with Hamas releasing 24 people and Israel freeing 39 Palestinian prisoners.
President Biden has said “the chances are real” that this pause could lead to a longer ceasefire, noting that it’s “only a start, but so far it’s gone well.”
Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at the risk intelligence company RANE, dubbed the truce the “first significant diplomatic breakthrough” in this war so far, noting that it means humanitarian conditions in Gaza will be “allowed to improved” for at least a few days.
The ceasefire comes amidst a war that has displaced two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.2 million population, who have limited access to food and water. An estimated 200,000 Israelis living in border communities with Gaza and Lebanon in the north have also faced displacement since Oct. 7.
“In terms of what’s next, what we needed to see is a diplomatic process that in some form or another will address Israel’s security concerns, which are driven by Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip,” Bohl told me.
“If this diplomatic process can somehow end Hamas’s control of Gaza, then it would preclude the need for further Israeli military operations and potentially prevent a full-scale reoccupation of Gaza by the Israeli military,” he said.
However, Bohl underlined that this is “a very difficult scenario” since it would require Hamas to “accept a secondary or perhaps even non-existent formal role in Gaza” and perhaps even necessitate Israel accepting that it might not get all the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attack.
Independent Middle East analyst Kyle Orton believes there is “little chance” this ceasefire will lead to “a broader cessation of hostilities.”
“Israel is willing to try anything to get the hostages back, but the determination to destroy Hamas remains: after Oct. 7, there is an overwhelming consensus within Israel that there can be no security while Hamas rules Gaza,” Orton told me.
Israel’s campaign began shortly after the Hamas attack 49 days ago. So far, it has lasted almost as long as the longest Israeli operation against Hamas to date, Operation Protective Edge in mid-2014, which lasted 51 days but has proven far more deadly for Gaza and its inhabitants.
While an estimated 2,310 Palestinians lost their lives in that 2014 operation, an estimated 14,100 have been killed in the present conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It’s presently unclear how many of these are Hamas or other militants. The Hamas attack on Israel that precipitated this war was also the deadliest in Israel’s modern history, killing at least 1,200 Israelis, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians.
“It is possible that we see humanitarian pauses and or a more restrained Israeli military campaign going forward to ease humanitarian concerns from the United States,” Bohl said. “But broadly, we are likely to see a resumption of Israeli military operations in the coming days or weeks in order to finish up the ground invasion.”
“This is in large part because there are no readily viable options that address Israel’s security concerns short of this,” he added.
Both Israel and Hamas made concessions to reach this agreement. Israel had previously maintained it wanted all the hostages released, while Hamas was insisting it would only trade the hostages for the estimated 6,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
The two sides have also declared their readiness to resume fighting.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the trade a “difficult” but “right decision,” vowing that no hostage deal would end the fighting. He affirmed Israel will fight on until it meets its stated objectives of “eradicating Hamas, bringing all hostages back, and ensuring that in the day after Hamas, Gaza won’t threaten Israel.”
For its part, Hamas declared that “our fingers remain on the trigger” and its “victorious fighters will remain on the lookout to defend our people and defeat the occupation.”
Nicholas Heras, senior director of strategy and innovation at the New Lines Institute, described the ceasefire deal as “an inflection point” in the conflict.
“The Netanyahu-led government insists that it will not have the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) leave Gaza until Hamas is removed from power, but there is enormous pressure from Biden on Netanyahu behind the scenes to end the conflict as soon as possible,” Heras told me.
“For these reasons, the ceasefire deal, which is extendable by design, could be the start of the runway for Netanyahu to end the war,” he said.
Netanyahu has previously refused even to contemplate a ceasefire until all the hostages were released. However, he has faced mounting pressure at home from the hostage families, who recently staged a large march to Jerusalem to pressure his government on the matter.
Orton noted that Netanyahu had no choice but to try any means to get the hostages home, given the strong demand among the Israeli public. Nevertheless, he believes the Israeli prime minister is “on a hiding to nothing” regarding the outcome.
“If some of the hostages are recovered, this will be seen as no more than what he should be doing to correct a mistake of his own making since many in Israel blame him for not adequately preparing to prevent the Oct. 7 pogrom,” he said.
On the other hand, if it all goes wrong, that will be added to the extensive “political indictment” against Netanyahu.
“If Netanyahu was going to be replaced before the war was over, that would probably have already happened,” Orton said. “But if this leads to some kind of disaster or if Netanyahu seems to be getting drawn into an open-ended ceasefire, the chances of a move against him from within the Cabinet increase.”
Heras doubts the Israeli military leadership will want to cease targeted operations and strikes against the Hamas leadership and also wants to guarantee Hamas will not run Gaza after this war eventually comes to a formal end.
“This reality, combined with the fact that the top echelon of Hamas military leaders in Gaza are still alive and will want to claim victory over Israel by surviving beyond the war, means that the situation is on the knife’s edge of returning to a full-blown war,” he said.
Read the full article here