The Israel–Hamas Ceasefire Won’t Last

Israel & Palestine, One Year Later

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Israel and Hamas have signed a ceasefire agreement. It’s supposed to have three phases that bleed into the reconstruction of Gaza over the next few years.

It won’t last that long. I don’t think it will make it to the end of the year.

Here’s what the agreement says and why the current geopolitics stamp an expiration date on it.

The Agreement

It has three phases:¹

1. In the first 42 days, 33 Israeli hostages will be released (women, children, and older people)². Israel will release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners—many of whom have life sentences for crimes against Israel. Israel will also start withdrawing from some parts of Gaza.

2. In the following 42 days, Hamas releases all the remaining hostages who are still alive. Israel releases more Palestinian prisoners. Israel should be withdrawing from all of Gaza.

3. After that, Hamas releases the remains of the deceased Israelis it holds, while Israel releases still more Palestinian prisoners. Israel and Hamas negotiate the future of Gaza. Hamas agrees not to rebuild its arsenal, and Gaza is rebuilt.

So why won’t this last?

Israel’s Existential Threat

For Israel, Hamas’ attack of October 7th 2023 was a holocaust. The Israel from before is dead: Israelis no longer believe that peaceful cohabitation with Hamas is possible. Now, the only thing Israelis think is how can we ensure that this doesn’t happen again? Never again.

From the director of the Israeli digital service, retweeted by the official @Israel account

This is why Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has consistently said that Israel has three war objectives:

1. To return all hostages

2. To eliminate Hamas’s governing capabilities

3. To ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel

He reiterated this as late as January 18th 2025, after the ceasefire was signed!

So why is Israel signing the ceasefire? I don’t think broad international pressure mattered much: If anything, it has shrunk over time, as people have gotten used to the violence. It’s also not money: For all the war effort in 2024, Israel’s debt to GDP ratio has grown 8 percentage points, from 61% to 69%.³

There are two reasons why Israel signed the ceasefire. The most important is because the first war objective is to get the hostages, of course. They are the symbol of October 7th. If it can get them back, it can close that painful chapter.

But that is going to happen in the coming 84 days. It will be done by the end of April. After that, of course Israel will want the remains of the deceased, but that might drag out over time and is not as important as getting the live hostages.⁴ And with every new remains brought home, Israel will have less motivation to keep the ceasefire intact.

By April, Israel’s first war objective will have been achieved. It will then focus on the other two: the end of Hamas and the neutralization of Gaza as a threat. Do you really think Israel will let Hamas take over again?

Israel benefits from the ceasefire for a second reason: Trump. As Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu told Trump for his inauguration:

Trump wants to look like he can bring peace to the Middle East easily, so he pressured Israel. Israel knows that, when things fall apart, Trump will blame Hamas and have Israel’s back. And right now Netanyahu’s government is a bit more stable than it used to be. So he probably thought: OK let’s sign this deal, this will get us our first war goal and give us some points with Trump. Then, once we get the hostages, we can make the ceasefire fail, blame Hamas, and go for the other two war goals: Eliminate Hamas and make sure Gaza is never a threat again.

Why is the elimination of Hamas so important? Because Israel now realizes the group will never stop until Israel is eliminated. Why?

• The updated Hamas charter sees peace with Israel as impossible, doesn’t give up the right to fight, doesn’t recognize Israel, and advocates for the liberation of all of Palestine—that is, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Jerusalem must be the capital of Palestine. All Palestinian refugees would be entitled to both the right to return and reparations for the time they lost their homes.

• Hamas claims it doesn’t have problems with Jews, but it can’t stand Zionism—the construction of a state for Jews in Palestine.

• The popular opinion in Gaza still heavily supports Hamas: As of September 2024, 89% of Gazans thought Hamas didn’t commit the atrocities it committed against civilians, 40% thought Hamas was correct in attacking Israel, 39% thought Hamas was managing Gaza well, 36% wanted Hamas to stay in control of Gaza, 48% of voters would have voted for Hamas if there were elections, 36% still thought armed resistance against Israel was the way to get an independent state.

• Hamas has built its entire identity around the conflict with Israel. That’s why it has diverted immense sums of money from the economy into building its weapons and tunnels. Have you heard any reference to a change of heart?

• Palestinian authorities don’t recognize Israel’s existence,⁵ consistently portray Palestine as including Israel, raise children to believe all of Palestine should be free from the river to the sea,⁶ educate them to kill Jews, convert them into terrorists, funds the families of martyrs, and often quote any concession from Israel as a stepping stone to liberating all of Israel and Palestine.

Before, Israel could bury its head in the sand and avoid this reality, but then Hamas yanked it out and raped it. And nothing Israelis see make them think Hamas or Palestinians have had a complete change of heart. This is the new head of Hamas:

This is Hamas with Gazans:

Source

Source

This is what Israel sees, so it concludes that the only solution to Hamas is its total destruction. And Israel also believes that now is the perfect time to eliminate Hamas, because it is at its weakest.

Hamas’ Miscalculation

I don’t think Hamas realizes how clueless its miscalculation was. Hamas thought:

• They were in the right to kill, torture, rape, and kidnap thousands of Israelis

• The Israeli retaliation would unify Palestinians and rally them to the cause

• It would fire up its Muslim brethren, who would support Palestinians

• In particular, Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah, Syria, and maybe even the Houthis, would come to their rescue

• Israel would become an international pariah

• The US would intervene to stop Israel’s attacks

• Allah would support them in their Jihad

• Eventually, all this friendship for Hamas and hatred towards Israel would result in a huge victory for Hamas and the recognition of the State of Palestine

• Something something Hamas conquers back Israel, from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean)

What happened instead? Hamas is alone.

Internal Support

The worst for Hamas is what happened at home. Although a sizable share of the population still supports them, that number dropped precipitously in the last few months:

As the war raged on, support for Hamas waned.

Gazans think Hamas did a poor job.

We can get a visceral sense of that—While Hamas tried to convey a sense of power during the first hostage release:

This was the reality:

Hamas is weak. Source.

So the internal support has fallen, but the external support has plummeted even faster!

Iran & Friends

They’re off the gameboard.

Lebanon and Syria are done. In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s leadership and thousands of its operators have been wiped off the map. The Lebanese are fed up with Palestinians and how they dragged them into their civil war and constant conflict, and how their politics have been controlled by the Iranian proxy rather than local politicians.

In Syria, Assad is out of the picture. The locals are fed up with war, they’re fed up with the hostility that Palestinians cause in the region. They seem to want good relationships with Israel, now that Syria has no military power whatsoever and is embroiled in its own conflicts with Turkey and Kurds.

The Houthis are in Yemen, too far away. They played at antagonizing Israel by launching missiles, but Israel bombed their ports, airport, and military facilities. They are in no position to seriously challenge Israel.

Iran has lost its proxies everywhere, has economic problems, its attack and defense systems have been exposed to Israel’s, it will be crushed economically by Trump, and it has rampant internal dissent. It will be hard for it to have much impact in Palestine in the coming years.

It’s always quite hard to believe these anecdotes, but lately all the info I received about support on the ground for the Iranian government reinforces this perception. Source.

Other Muslim Brethren

Arab states don’t support Hamas, or even Palestinians.

Obviously, that’s not what they say. They all show solidarity with Palestinians and their cause, blame Israel, and demand de-escalation. But the reality is different.

When Iran sent missiles to Israel, Arab countries sided with Israel. Jordan and Saudi Arabia actively helped Israel and the US down the missiles. They didn’t just let Israel and the US use their airspace: Jordan actively shot down missiles, too! Other countries, like the UAE, also shared intelligence with Israel and the US. Radars in Qatar helped identify the incoming missiles.

Egypt and Jordan have been at peace with Israel for decades. Egypt has had its border with Gaza closed for ages, and forced all its border population to move away from the border to create a buffer zone that tunnels couldn’t bridge. Jordan expelled the Palestinian leadership, went to war with it, and has serious concerns about the Palestinians living in Jordan. The government there collaborates heavily with Israel, including getting a lot of water from it.

The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan signed the Abraham Accords with Israel—peace treaties—and didn’t back out of them.

The US

Whereas Biden’s administration was sympathetic to Palestinians, Trump’s administration is radically more pro-Israel. Trump has described himself as the "most pro-Israel President", has said he’s done the most for the country, has told Israel to “finish the problem”, and has criticized Biden for limiting arms sales to Israel. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense recently said:

I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.

Also:

Why the ceasefire then?

• Israel has three war goals: Get the hostages back, eliminate Hamas, and make sure Gaza is not a threat ever again.

• The ceasefire allows Israel to achieve Goal 1.

• It also wins points with Trump, hence the timing of the agreement (and not when Biden proposed it eight months ago).

• Trump’s strong support of Israel allows Israel to break the ceasefire without repercussions from the US.

• The moment Israel gets the hostages, it will focus on Goal 2: Eliminate Hamas, because Hamas still fundamentally wants the destruction of Israel.

• Hamas is at its weakest, both internally and externally. It has never been easier to eradicate it.

• Meanwhile, Israel is extremely strong, on the back of successes against Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad, and Iran. So Israel won’t let the chance pass.

• It has an incentive to attack Hamas as soon as possible, to avoid its reinforcement.

All this tells us that Israel will break the ceasefire at some point after the end of Phase 2, when all the live hostages are in its hands.⁷ The end of Phase 2 is April 13th.

Meanwhile, it’s very unlikely that Hamas will break the ceasefire:

• It’s super weak

• It knows it will never get a better deal than what it got under President Biden

From all this, we can conclude that the ceasefire is most likely to be broken soon after April 13th. Do you agree? You can make your predictions here:

But wait, we’ve only discussed Israel’s war Goals 1 and 2. What about Goal 3, ensuring that Gaza is never again a threat?

How Can Israel Achieve Peace with Gaza?