In order to secure the ceasefire that takes effect today, both Hamas and Israel have abandoned their long-standing demands. Both sides were responding to internal and external pressure when Israel agreed to withdraw its troops from nearly all of Gaza, while Hamas accepted a temporary cessation of hostilities but not the end to the war it sought.

In the case of Israel, one source of external pressure was President-elect Donald Trump, who forced Benjamin Netanyahu to accept conditions he had long rejected. Israel's prime minister has also been affected by public outcry for the hostages to be rescued. Netanyahu’s priorities and incentives are relatively obvious and easy to understand. In this case, Hamas's strategy is even more opaque.

In a major concession, Hamas accepted that many of its key cadres will now be held indefinitely in Israeli prisons. In any case, the radical Islamist group is no longer the same group that carried out the massacre on October 7, 2023. Its battalion had been destroyed; all that remained was a ragtag group of insurgents resorting to hit-and-run tactics. The group's arsenal is severely depleted; its militants have turned to improvised explosive devices assembled from unexploded Israeli munitions. Hamas's top military leadership has been eliminated, leaving only two relatively inexperienced and junior commanders - Ezz al-Din Hadad in the north and Oct. Mohamed Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the planner of the 7th attack.

When Sinwar and his deputies planned the original 2023 attack, they undoubtedly anticipated a devastating Israeli military response. They accepted a bargain that sacrificed all the infrastructure and quasi-state institutions Hamas had built in Gaza since seizing power in 2007 in exchange for a "permanent" guerrilla war against Israel. According to the military branch's theory of the insurgency, Hamas militants will inflict a heavy attrition on the Israeli army after drawing the IDF to Gaza. This scenario seemed somewhat credible when Israel recently lost 15 soldiers in one week in the northern town of Beit Hanoun. After 15 months of fighting, the IDF's losses are incomparable to those of Hamas. But Israeli generals need clarity from the civilian government on the political objectives of the war and what they call victory.

(Read: Israel has never made its goals clear)

Hamas may finally have a moment of clarity. Sinwar once derided the Hamas politburo as "hotel people" because political leaders living in comfortable accommodation abroad rarely had personal experience of armed struggle. For more than a decade, Gaza's gunmen have grown increasingly powerful, while Hamas civilian figures who formerly commanded from foreign capitals have been reduced to soft-power roles as diplomats and television talking heads. Their purpose is as a conduit for money and weapons, but in Sinwar's view they have no hard power value to the movement.

All this has changed. Sinwar is dead; in Lebanon, the great ally Hezbollah has collapsed; in Syria, Israel's long-time rival Bashar al-Assad has fallen; and a humble Iran has been shut out. So Hamas had to change course. With Türkiye and Qatar re-emerging as regional power brokers, transactional diplomacy among hoteliers is now the only game in town. If Hamas wants to re-establish power within Gaza, the Politburo must succeed.

There is abundant evidence that Hamas, led by Sinwar, performs poorly in public opinion in Gaza and that 2.2 million Palestinians have suffered continuous displacement, hellish suffering and mass death. Military factions believe that taking a positive stance on the so-called axis of resistance of Iranian-backed regional militias will shift Palestinian public opinion in their favor. But the potential for backlash among civilians in Gaza is certainly palpable and there is certainly a perception that this is a years-long insurgency. Even the most stubborn and militant Hamas leadership must operate within a Palestinian political context that requires strong support for a “people’s war.”

But the decisive factor in Hamas's move to the negotiating table was a sea change in the broader geopolitical landscape. The Sinwar strategy of October 7 was to provoke a multi-front war against Israel in the hope of drawing its ultimate adversaries, the United States and Iran, into the regional conflict. That call went unanswered. When Hezbollah made it clear it would intensify the long-running border conflict with Israel but largely stay out of the Gaza war, Hamas leaders initially complained but eventually had to accept that the Lebanese cavalry was not on the road.

Even so, Hamas enjoys broader support among its regional supporters. However, the damage Israel inflicted on Hezbollah last year, the general degradation of Iran's militia network, and Tehran's failure to use Arab fighters as a forward defense strategy against Israel and the United States were decisive. The collapse of the resistance proved crucial to Hamas' transformation.

With the end of the Assad regime in Syria, Iran now has no overland routes to resupply Hezbollah in Lebanon, let alone Hamas in Gaza. Assad's fall helped shift power within Hamas from the Qassam Brigades, which advocated a "permanent war" against Israel, to civilian politicians who had recently relocated to Turkey from Qatar. Many of these agents never actually participated in the strategy of abandoning Gaza governance and turning to guerrilla warfare. Hamas has carefully avoided public disagreements, but signs of unease among Politburo members are evident.

The victory of Turkish-backed rebels in Syria has fundamentally changed Hamas’s calculus. Türkiye and its close ally Qatar are now emerging as key players in the Levant. For Hamas, any political ties it could exploit with Ankara and Doha suddenly became more important than any ties with Tehran. Unlike the leaders of Iran, the rulers of Türkiye and Qatar have no intention of prolonging the endless conflict in Gaza. Both countries have largely aligned themselves with the United States. They have an overwhelming interest in regional stability rather than supporting an endless rebellion on Israel’s doorstep.

If Hamas wishes to resume governing Gaza and restore its social contract with its more than 2 million Palestinian residents, Türkiye and Qatar are most likely to provide the means. This involved first political and diplomatic cover, then funding for the territory's reconstruction, particularly its fragmented health and education systems.

Trump's threat to "pay hell" if a hostage deal is not reached before taking office may mean nothing to Hamas. But even if the president-elect's main influence is Netanyahu, Ankara and Doha certainly think the Trump factor is enough to rely on the Politburo. The Qassam Brigades fighters who survived the Gaza tunnels still have guns, and at some point they may decide they've had enough of the ceasefire; similarly, Israel won't hesitate to play whack-a-mole, and Netanyahu may would feel that resuming the conflict would serve his interests. But for now, Politburo members who want to escape the endless war and try to reestablish political power in Gaza have the momentum and influence. This is the reason for the ceasefire, and why it is likely to continue.