What comes after the Israel-Hamas deal?

By: Ricardo Israel - 20/01/2025

It was difficult, but there was white smoke and an agreement. The Prime Minister of Qatar announced it, saying that it will come into effect this Sunday, January 19, starting at 12:15 p.m., with a first phase lasting 42 days, including a ceasefire, a commitment to a partial withdrawal by Israel to the east and a commitment by Hamas not to return to those places. In my opinion, the idea seems to be to move the fighting away from populated areas, where the terrorist organization takes refuge, and where Israel is directing its response.

Shortly after, Infobae reported that 33 Israeli hostages will be released, predominantly women (soldiers and civilians), children and men over 50 years old. For its part, Israel will release 30 detainees for each civilian hostage and 50 Palestinian detainees for each female Israeli soldier. There will be a thousand or so detainees in this stage, and the final and total number will depend on how many hostages remain alive. In addition, hundreds of trucks will enter with essential goods, food and fuel.

The Israeli military suspects that thirty-something abductees are dead, to which I would add that some are probably not even in the hands of a barely surviving movement like Hamas, and are likely in the hands of other movements and common criminals as well.

As for the prisoners who are released, Israel has also handed over more than a thousand in the past for hostages such as soldier Gilad Shalit, so Hamas is used to these exchanges, which are so unbalanced in numbers. In fact, in one of these exchanges, the prisoner who later took over the military command of Hamas, sparking this conflict, was released. His name was Yayha Sinwar, and he was killed in Rafah, southern Gaza, in October of last year.

In the current exchange, there is one name, only one of great future relevance, and it is not known whether it is included or not. It is Marwan Barghouti, 65 years old, also known as Abu Qassam, arrested in 2002 and sentenced to five life sentences plus forty years in prison, accused of participating in the planning of several assassinations. He is a member of the Fatah movement (of Yasser Arafat) and created a paramilitary movement within it. According to the polls, he would be the favourite to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority, as well as being a consensus candidate with Hamas.

The current agreement was brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, exactly the same ones who were in the previous one, in November 2023, where a temporary pause was agreed with hostages and convicts handed over to the International Red Cross. It also considered a ceasefire, and ultimately, Hamas released 105 hostages, mostly women and children, and Israel released 240 prisoners. It was later extended for another 3 days, during which another 55 hostages and 90 prisoners were released in staggered stages. Hundreds of trucks with humanitarian aid and fuel were also allowed to enter.

Just as now, it was greeted with hope and applause, but it did not last long, with talks stalling and rocket attacks and military operations resuming on December 1, so the ceasefire lasted only 7 days. Will this story repeat itself? Let us remember that not only in 2023, but in previous armed confrontations there were also ceasefires in 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022. Indeed. On October 6, 2023, there was one of these ceasefire periods, when Hamas attacked Israeli territory, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping (along with other groups such as Islamic Jihad, clans and civilian groups) 205 women, men, children and adults, Israelis and from 17 other countries, which is the forgotten origin of this war.

Now, both Biden and Trump are taking credit for this success, and the truth is that both contributed. In May, Biden publicly proposed something very similar, but on that occasion he was not given much attention, so it seems that Trump's ultimatum to unleash "hell" if there was no agreement on the day he assumed the presidency also played a role.

The patience of the mediators was also important on this occasion (Qatar even has mediation and negotiation incorporated into its constitution), but the fundamental thing was that Hamas was defeated militarily and Israel reached this date without any real possibility of achieving its objective of freeing the hostages.

An agreement could have been reached earlier, but as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, Hamas did not want to sign it beforehand, preventing it from materializing. In any case, then or now, this agreement must undoubtedly have represented a dilemma for Jerusalem, since it is not a good agreement.

Understandable from every point of view, given the anguish of the relatives, but after almost 15 months, Israel recognizes that it did not achieve another objective, which was the disappearance of Hamas. It was achieved that it was not a military alternative capable - for now - of unleashing a war of this magnitude again, but this agreement gives it the possibility of telling its members that it obtained a "draw" and not an indisputable defeat. This agreement allows it a role, even if only discursive, in the future of Gaza, in its reconstruction.

The above contributes to a reality where, like the Islamic State (see Syria these days), Al Qaeda (see sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan) or the Chechens in Russia, Hamas can survive, due to its similarity to Hezbollah of being also a religious and social movement, as well as a terrorist group. Now, the agreement with Israel allows it to be recognized as the current government, since this Agreement includes the idea of stages, and the next one would begin on the 16th of the first phase that begins this Sunday the 19th, where a permanent ceasefire would be attempted. Therefore, it ensures a participation in the future of Gaza, since Trump and the US are going to push to move forward with the Abraham Accords and a negotiation not only for the reconstruction of Gaza, but also for a future Palestinian State. In this regard, it should be remembered that during his previous administration, Trump's idea was to continue to support the Palestinians, and he even offered 50 billion for the West Bank and Gaza, only to be rejected, as on previous occasions, by the Palestinian Authority.

Israel is, of course, doubly disadvantaged, since the Sunni Arab countries are unlikely to want to participate in the reconstruction of Gaza if Hamas remains in power. In this war, with so many simultaneous fronts, Israel eliminated the current leadership and many thousands of fighters (who appear as civilians in the death tolls given by Hamas), so they are not in a position to start another October 7th, but there is nothing to indicate that they will not want to do so in the future, since they have not given up on the idea, especially if it is true that the bombings have generated a respectable number of new recruits for Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, does not seem to want to challenge them in their role as representatives of the Palestinians in Gaza, so everything indicates that, on the contrary, it is Hamas that is trying to displace them in the West Bank as well, since, in fact, there are many incursions, almost another front, of Israeli troops in Jenin and other cities, fighting against Hamas militants and other Islamist groups.

Israel has successfully completed its military incursion into Gaza, and the recent fighting is intended to prevent the reconstruction of Hamas' power as a civil administrator, which is the effort to which the terrorist movement has been dedicated, pressuring the civilian population to obey the instructions it gives, as well as police functions and a strong participation in the black market of food for the Gazan population through theft and hoarding that is carried out, through the assault on trucks that enter.

Such an incident could blow up the current agreement, but I assume it will last more than a month, and hopefully even longer. In Qatar and Egypt, these meetings took place in separate rooms for the Israeli and Hamas delegations, so there have been no reports of face-to-face meetings.

However, the goal of pausing in Gaza was achieved. Perhaps we won't see war there in the near future, but there won't be any peace yet. What Hamas unleashed was a conflict that left many people confused about the name by which it would be remembered in history. It appeared as just another war between Israel and the Palestinians, but as the role of Iran and its proxies became more visible, it was increasingly one between Jihad and the West, with Israel confronting it with little understanding from the Europeans and part of the US about what it meant and represented.

In my opinion, by 2025, Gaza will lose prominence in the news coming out of the region, to be increasingly replaced by the possibility that the US, Israel and the Sunni Arab countries will jointly present an ultimatum to Iran to abandon its nuclear program, just as the US successfully did with the programs in South Africa, Argentina and the former Soviet republics, where Ukraine and Belarus also handed over the nuclear weapons and rockets they had at that time.

Israel, the Sunni Arabs and the US will hardly ever find a weaker Iran than the current one, which was a major achievement of Israel's victories over its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza and in direct confrontations last year. The Ayatollahs have always shown that the most important thing for them is to continue controlling Iran, in order to develop from there as a leader of Shiite Islam.

This year, 2025, there should be an international effort to move forward on the Palestinian State, ideally with an interlocutor who accepts the existence of Israel as a Jewish State and a partner for peace, for which it has not been possible, one State alongside the other, and not instead of the other, as has been more than once the position of those who have led the Palestinians, wasting not only the 1948 agreement, but also several subsequent opportunities.

Related to these fundamental facts, it is likely that in 2025 we will witness a series of highly significant situations that will take place in the region.

First of all, in Israel, if the present Agreement is maintained, Netanyahu should end the Gaza campaign, which should initiate the search for a government for Gaza and its reconstruction, for me, ideally with the participation of the Sunni Arab countries and the Palestinian Authority, in charge of the civil administration and Israel maintaining a military presence, a kind of Philadelphia corridor to avoid another October 7.

Second, we will surely see the formation of a Commission of Inquiry, at the highest level, into the enormous failure that October 7 represented for Israel in 2025, and which, unlike the one in 1973, will not only investigate political representatives, but also the performance of the high-ranking security officers and the armed forces. This will probably take place in parallel with the postponed trial of Benjamin Netanyahu, and we will also learn the respective sentence, whether guilty or acquitted.

Third, Syria will generate a lot of news material if it develops situations that affect other countries in the region, especially if those who overthrew Assad return to their old jihadist ways. For Israel, the most fearful scenario is if the dominance of Erdogan's Turkey in the new Syria leads to a confrontation with Israel, which could lead to a conflict similar to that which Iran could provoke if it tried to control the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. In the most favorable scenario, however, it could lead to a scenario of concern for the country's security, especially if Turkey were to seek to eliminate as many Kurds as possible in Syria and Iraq.

Finally, in 2025 we should witness a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which would be a very important event, with an impact on Israel being accepted as part of the Middle East and a peace treaty between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

In conclusion, the present Agreement says that Hamas managed to survive, and as so often before, Israel was successful militarily, but not politically. It is an old story, which by itself shows what works well and where the country has repeatedly failed. It also shows that, even if it wins militarily, in the political arena, in the end, the winning story may be that of Israel's adversaries.

This result is also bad for Netanyahu, who did not achieve one of the objectives he had in mind when entering Gaza, despite military achievements that were more difficult than those of the legendary Six-Day War of 1967. However, the signing of this Agreement and the following stages will allow Hamas to say that it is alive, especially if the Palestinian Authority, which it violently expelled from the enclave, has continued to weaken due to corruption in the management of so many resources that have been handed over to it from abroad, with the looking away of so many Western political leaders as well as the European and American media, who have also looked the other way, not only because of this corruption, but also because of the violation of human rights that have been committed against the Palestinians, focusing exclusively on Israel.

Personally, I think that the Iranian threat is serious enough to strengthen the relationship between the Arab countries and Israel, with enormous benefits for the entire Middle East, especially if an alliance emerges from this that replaces the negative role being played by institutions such as the United Nations and the European countries that are heirs to the old colonialism, that is, those who created the problem in the first place. Therefore, I am convinced that better things can come if the participation of Europe and the United Nations is more marginal than relevant.

@israelzipper

-Master and PhD in Political Science, University of Essex (England), Bachelor of Law, University of Barcelona (Spain), Lawyer (University of Chile), former presidential candidate (Chile, 2013)

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».