A good deal is one where everyone leaves happy or everyone leaves angry. The emotions must match. By that standard, the deal between Israel and Hamas is good, but not great: both groups enjoy what they get and feel a little stifled by what they give up. Israel is more suffocating than Hamas. There will be scenes of cheers and victory from Gazans and Israelis, and leaders from both sides will work hard to make the Gaza war a victory. But the past 15 months have been a dismal failure for Israel and Gaza, and the only good news from a negotiating perspective is that both sides have tasted some bitterness.
The hostages have not yet been released and the ceasefire does not begin until Sunday, so all reports so far remain speculative and optimistic. The terms are similar to those leaked over the past week. Israel will release large numbers of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas will release the remaining hostages, living and dead, seized on October 7, 2023, in batches. There are still nearly 100 hostages. The two sides would cease fighting for 42 days, with the aim (again speculative) of a permanent ceasefire and an end to the war. The unaccounted for Israeli hostages include civilians, including Bibas children who were nine months and four years old when they were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz after their grandparents were massacred.
Hamas did not even acknowledge whether the children were alive or allow the Red Crescent to conduct welfare checks, largely leading Israelis to believe that negotiations with the organization were pointless. Why talk to someone who is too sadistic to let you know if they shoot or feed babies? Taking civilian hostages is a war crime, and negotiating with a group that brags about taking civilian hostages is more like negotiating with a clown than with Nelson Mandela. The act of kidnapping a child particularly tests one's moral imagination. It’s no surprise that negotiations have struggled so far. Negotiation requires trust, and someone who takes a baby away from you is hard to trust.
From the beginning of the war, Israel has struggled to define its goals—in part because, as a country, it is so divided about its nature and purpose that any clearly articulated real goals will not satisfy a large portion of its population. In their place were reassuring but vague slogans. “Freeing the hostages” was a defensible goal from the start—a goal that was just and within Israel’s rights—but it obscured many more thorny strategic issues. What if the release of hostages involves releasing murderers and terrorists from Israeli prisons? Apparently it does. What if their freedom is conditional on allowing Hamas to survive and rule Gaza?
Apparently yes. Gaza was devastated and tens of thousands of people were killed. But Hamas remains the only armed force likely to rule Gaza after Israel withdraws. If the goal is to end the war, it will end with Hamas's bloodshed but not its surrender. Israel estimates that Hamas has only two battalions intact, but analyst Seth Frantzman, a professional bad news bear on the subject, lays out evidence that Hamas has about a dozen battalions. Sri Lankan soldiers survived. Moreover, the post-Hamas Gaza plan is tantamount to shelving. For more than a year, Israel and its allies have been considering a role for the Palestinian Authority, Gulf states or Egypt in providing security forces in a post-Hamas Gaza. I wonder about the mental health of those who suggest this option. Are these security forces in the room with us now? So far, there is no prospect of any such group emerging, and no one is willing to send soldiers into ruin-strewn urban war zones to contend with Hamas fighters who themselves are unwilling to disarm.
Hamas will celebrate this agreement because it will survive and, through its survival, it will prove the failure of another slogan adopted by Israel: "Destroy Hamas." This slogan is also simple and fair. But like Hostages Freed , it leaves all the big questions unanswered and hangs over it like a thundercloud. The first question is whether Israel is willing to inflict collateral civilian casualties and absorb military casualties to the extent that experts believe is necessary to achieve its goals. This question is partially answered: According to Israel's own account, Israel has caused many civilian casualties, while its own military casualties have been pitifully few. (Before the war, analysts predicted that thousands of Israeli soldiers would be killed in tunnel-clearing operations.)
The second question about this slogan is whether the "destruction" of Hamas is what it appears to be. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uses it, it sounds a lot like eradication so that Hamas will no longer exist in any form, like ETA and the Red Army Faction. It will fail and close shop, not even maintain a token website, or leave a masked dead-end broadcast somewhere in a basement. Another possible explanation is destroy It is simply to destroy Hamas's ability to launch another attack (such as October 7). The latter is a simplified version of the slogan and offers a better chance of success. But it's also less than satisfying and no longer suitable for bumper stickers.
When I spoke to Israeli national security officials last year, the most realistic among them spoke of a future in Gaza like the West Bank today. The lives of the Palestinian people would be very unhappy if they lived under the day-to-day administration of the Palestinian government. Israel will regularly carry out missions to kill or capture Hamas members. This vision is consistent with a more limited version of Israel's goal for Hamas: reducing it to a permanent but manageable problem. As of now, a ceasefire in Gaza would give Hamas a level of power well beyond Israel's control. It might delay a major battle rather than end it for good.
Israel has always had a further goal—a goal that, although rarely stated publicly, is shared by most Israelis and certainly their government. This is intended to make Gazans regret the attack on October 7 and serve as a deterrent against future attacks. Deterrence means demanding Hamas, Do you enjoy the results of your actions? This means asking Gazans, Are you willing to accept what Hamas has dragged you into? The most distressing thing about this hostage deal is that Gazans may regret the outcome of the October 7 attack, but Hamas is still celebrating. Hamas is a military organization; armies fight, and Hamas has just drawn a draw with a better-equipped opponent.
The downward trend in the fortunes of its allies has dampened that enthusiasm. In the days following October 7, Israel was uneasy and worried that Hezbollah might exploit the shock of the attack in the country to enter the war from the north. Israel failed to withstand an attack from the south, so it is unclear whether it could withstand a more powerful attack from the north. Israel's war with Hezbollah was largely successful late last year, with the fall of Syria's Bashar al-Assad at least temporarily eliminating two major potential disruptors. Hamas now knows it has Israel's undivided attention - a prospect that may prompt it to consider the negotiation offer it rejected just months ago.
Finally, the most promising aspect of the agreement is that it breaks with nearly a year of war in Gaza that has continued without any clearly articulated endpoint or plan. Israel fought and weakened Hamas. But fighting is a tool, not an end; a ceasefire would at least give civilians on both sides a breath of relief and time to stop and think about what happens next.