Hamas will not willingly surrender power in Gaza. But even a terrorist group can’t fight without arms.
On Friday, it was widely reported that Hamas accepted the Trump (or, if you prefer, Trump-Netanyahu) peace deal to end the war in Gaza, albeit subject to conditions:
The terrorist group said Friday evening it would release the hostages “according to the exchange formula contained in President Trump’s proposal, and as the field conditions for the exchange are met.” “In this context, the movement affirms its readiness to immediately enter into negotiations through the mediators to discuss these details,” the Hamas statement added…Hamas also agreed “to hand over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a Palestinian body of independent technocrats, based on Palestinian national consensus and Arab and Islamic support.”
At first glance, this comes as a surprise and should be greeted with skepticism. While the deal was not ideal from an Israeli perspective, both its terms and who agreed to them represented major progress towards envisioning a postwar future in which Gaza was not ruled by Hamas. That alone, being Israel’s chief war aim (along with the return of the remaining hostages), would represent an unambiguous victory in the war for Israel and an unambiguous defeat for Hamas. Encouragingly, like the Franco-Saudi U.N. resolution in August, the Trump-Netanyahu deal was agreed to by multiple key Arab and Muslim governments, including Qatar. My assumption was that the plan would be dead on arrival with Hamas, given that its core premise is that Hamas would surrender governing power over Gaza. So, what happened? As negotiators from Israel and Hamas head to Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt to begin indirect talks, there are three possible theories.
First, the agreement may be a sham. It’s entirely consistent with Hamas’s prior behavior to claim that it is agreeing to a deal, but inserting so many poison-pill disagreements with its terms that it is just a public relations exercise designed to shift the blame to Israel for resuming hostilities. The BBC, for example, reports:
Trump’s plan states that within 72 hours of a deal being agreed all remaining hostages would be released…Hamas has agreed to the hostage “exchange formula” detailed in Trump’s plan, providing certain “field conditions” are met. But the hostages are the group’s only bargaining chip – and it’s unclear whether it would be willing to release them before other elements of the deal are finalised…
A key point in Trump’s plan requires the group to disarm. But Hamas has previously refused to lay down its weapons, saying it would only do so once a Palestinian state has been established. In its response, Hamas made no mention of disarmament…In Hamas’s response, it indicated that it expects to have some future role in Gaza as part of “a unified Palestinian movement”. Though the wording is vague, this will likely be unacceptable to both Trump and the Israelis.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies put it bluntly: “The terrorist organization’s statement, while agreeing to release the remaining hostages, was ambiguous on whether it would accept many of the conditions laid out in the U.S.-crafted plan, which included that the terrorist group would permanently disarm and surrender power in Gaza.”
The upfront timing of hostage releases, while important, should not be an insuperable sticking point so long as there are things Hamas wants and can’t get until the hostages are all released. And while some visible shows of handing over arms should be demanded, verifiable proof of disarmament is a notoriously difficult thing to prove. But the sine qua non of the agreement is that Hamas must lose the power to govern Gaza, a position from which it has been able to finance and logistically plan war against Israel without external restriction, as well as terrorize the population of Gaza. If Hamas is offering serious limits up front to agreement on all three of those points, even in theory, then there’s nothing resembling an agreement here.
Second, the agreement may be a play for time. This is a similar but not identical strategy: militarily, Hamas has been losing more than it gains on nearly every day of the war since October 7. It has been able to accomplish a lot in terms of propaganda from prolonged war, but at a certain point, if the goal of Hamas is to remain armed and in power, any day that Israel isn’t degrading its manpower and weaponry and shrinking the territory it controls is a good day for Hamas. With Donald Trump threatening more American support for the tempo and scope of war against Hamas, any delay may be in the interests of Hamas, regardless of whether or not an agreement follows and regardless of whether there’s a propaganda victory over Israel when hostilities resume.
Third, Hamas may be under pressures we suspect but can’t see. It still needs money and weapons, neither of which it can organically produce much of in Gaza. While some of its patrons (notably Iran) haven’t signed on to the deal, Qatari support in particular is ominous for Hamas. That’s especially so because the physical safety of the group’s political leadership depends upon a safe haven in Doha (hence, the furious reaction when Israel tried to take them out inside Qatar — a failed operation that set up many of the moves that followed and spawned all manner of logical but unproven theories about the Qataris tipping off one or both sides).
Hamas will not willingly surrender power in Gaza. But even a terrorist group can’t fight without arms. If real pressure is being applied behind the scenes to Hamas by the Arab and Muslim regimes who have bought into this deal, then – and only then — might there be a prospect for a peace that accomplishes Israel’s central war aim without having to run down the Hamas armed forces to the last man.