On Wednesday, after months of negotiations involving Israel, Hamas, the United States, Egypt, and Qatar, news broke that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza. The agreement was ratified by the Israeli security cabinet today and is set to take effect as early as Sunday.
If the agreement holds, Israel will withdraw its forces away from population centers in Gaza and then out of the strip altogether, allow in a surge of humanitarian aid, and free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas, for its part, will start releasing thirty-three hostages, though it is unclear how many of them—and the sixty or so hostages remaining in Gaza—are alive.
After the deal was announced, I sat down with Steven A. Cook, CFR’s Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies, to talk through the implications.
Froman: Steven, the Biden administration and others had been working on a deal for months. Last summer, we heard we were at the ten-yard line. How significant is the agreement that’s been announced, and why do you think it happened when it did?
Cook: It is a potentially important step in bringing the war in Gaza to an end. After the successful completion of the first phase, subsequent phases include a permanent cease-fire and the reconstruction of Gaza. The agreement will save lives by stopping the fighting and allowing for more humanitarian assistance to reach Gazans in need. In the first phase, displaced Palestinians will be allowed to return to their homes, while some six hundred trucks of humanitarian aid will enter Gaza each day. But many of those who return to their homes, especially in northern Gaza, will find that there is nothing left to go back to.
Why now? For one thing, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has been experiencing diminishing returns, especially as Hamas has shown it can still recruit new fighters. For another thing, Hamas faces significant military pressure, and it wants to escape the war it began with as much of its organization intact. And then there’s the impending inauguration of President Donald Trump, who has influence on and goodwill with Israel and a tougher rhetorical approach to Hamas and Iran.
But back to the content of the deal. One of the interesting aspects of it is that Israel is committing to withdraw from Gaza. It’s difficult to reconcile Israel’s apparent pledge to do that with its determination to maintain security control.
Froman: Israel is committing to withdraw from Gaza, or at least most of it, but it’s hard to imagine that Israel is going to give up control over access to Gaza from Egypt, where so much of the material support for Hamas came from, or to allow Hamas access to the border with Israel, through which the October 7 attack was launched. The degree to which Israel will control the Philadelphi Corridor in the south and a buffer zone in the north of Gaza will be critical.
All that suggests that there are many ways the agreement could fall apart. Steven, as those of us who follow Mideast peacemaking know all too well, just because there’s a deal doesn’t mean that it will hold. But if it does go into effect, should we consider the Israel-Hamas war over?
Cook: Not necessarily. Remember, when Hamas launched its attacks on October 7, 2023, it was also launching a total war that included a broad international effort to delegitimize Israel. Even if a cease-fire were to end the hostilities in Gaza, as the draft agreement envisions, Hamas, affiliated groups, and Iran would continue the war by other means.
What’s more, the division of the agreement into three phases makes it vulnerable to vigorous opposition on both sides. The first phase alone is six weeks, and only on the sixteenth day of that stage will negotiations begin over the terms of the second phase. That’s a lot of time for Israeli and Palestinian opponents of the deal to undermine it.
Who might the main spoilers be? Israeli settlers who want nothing less than the destruction of Hamas and the resettlement of Gaza, on one hand, and Palestinian extremists who believe they are winning, on the other.
But for the moment, let’s assume the deal holds. There is also the question of its broader regional effects. Soon after the Israel-Hamas war began, it started spilling over across the region, with the proxy conflict between Israel and Iran escalating in particular. The Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon—Iranian-backed militias, both—increased their attacks. It is unclear what the agreement portends for these spillover conflicts.
Froman: It turned out that what happens in Gaza doesn’t necessarily stay in Gaza. Hezbollah in Lebanon has been dramatically degraded and pushed back. Yet the Houthis not only continue to wreak havoc on shipping in the Red Sea but also threaten U.S. forces in the region.
The question now is whether a cease-fire in Gaza—like the outbreak of war there—will have spillover effects. With the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbollah has lost its access to support routes from Iran. That said, it’s unclear whether the Houthis, with Iran’s support, will stand down to allow the situation in Gaza to stabilize.
Moreover, when we look more broadly across the region, as our CFR colleague Elliott Abrams noted yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, has been speaking in much harsher terms about the Israeli campaign in Gaza and made it very clear that the normalization of Saudi relations with Israel will require a Palestinian state.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for that: president after president has tried and failed to strike a lasting settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. So even if this week’s deal does hold, its implications may be limited to stabilizing the situation in Gaza—which, given how much suffering the war has caused, is still something.
