Israel and Hamas have just reached an agreement under which Israel will suspend military operations in Gaza for 42 days and release a number of Palestinian prisoners, some serving life sentences, in return for Hamas’s release of 33 Israeli hostages.
During the 42-day interim period, Israel and Hamas will continue negotiations toward reaching a final end to the war in Gaza. If a resolution is not agreed but negotiations are proceeding in good faith, Israel has said it will maintain the ceasefire. Any final status deal would see Hamas release all remaining Israeli hostages alongside the remains of dead hostages. In return, Israel will end all combat operations in Gaza. The interim deal will take effect on Sunday.
This agreement is a clear win for Hamas and a necessary deal for Israel.
Hamas’s victory is underlined by Israel’s suspension of military operations while the terrorist group continues to exist. In a sign of where the second-stage negotiations are headed, Israel will remove some of its ground forces from certain areas of Gaza as part of this interim deal. That provision matters because, following the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping of 254 more, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had insisted that military action against Hamas would continue until it was annihilated.
To be sure, Hamas has been greatly diminished by more than a year of intensive Israeli military action. The group has lost thousands of fighters, all of its senior leaders, and general freedom of movement and action. Hamas now lacks the ability to carry out an attack anywhere near the scale of that which it effected on Oct. 7. Nevertheless, Israel has now given Hamas a literal existential win. Hamas will continue to possess a monopoly of force in Gaza, one that allows it to retain political dominance over the territory’s 2.1 million people. The group’s ideological commitment to taking control over all Israeli territory and purging these lands of Jews will remain its driving influence. Hamas attacks of some kind will occur in the future.
Still, for Israel, this was a deal that had to be made. While Israel has had great success in gutting Hamas of its military power, it has only been able to rescue a small number of Israeli hostages. Israel has also faced escalating diplomatic pressure and international popular concern, now at crisis levels, to reduce the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
But the key point driving this deal is that Hamas has been adamant that whatever the costs Israel imposed, it would not release its hostages unless Israel accepted concessions of this kind. Hamas knows that where it worships death in service of totalitarianism, Israel prizes the lives of its citizens. The trauma of the Holocaust makes this a particularly potent concern for Israelis and, perversely, offers a consistent motivation for Hamas to take Israelis hostages.
In turn, Netanyahu has rightly decided that the destruction Israel has caused to Hamas is now sufficient to justify allowing the group’s survival in return for rescuing Israelis from a literal hell on Earth. The moral dichotomy here, one of a state willing to allow a murderous enemy to survive in order to save a few dozen citizens, is striking. Hamas, after all, would be willing to let Gaza and all its residents burn into oblivion if doing so allowed it to survive.
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It’s important to note that Israel will retain the means of inflicting devastating costs on Hamas in the future. And because of what Hamas did on Oct. 7, the tolerance of this and future Israeli governments to take aggressive action against the group will sustain. This is something Western governments will have to adjust to. It is also important to note that this deal will free up Israeli military attention toward contingencies related to Iran’s nuclear program. It will also earn Israel at least some additional diplomatic favor in relation to those contingencies.
Put simply, Israel has made a necessary deal with the devil. But living to fight another day, Hamas has again learned the immense power of using innocent civilians as priceless political pawns.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
