The announcement this week that Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of a new ceasefire framework represents a welcome respite from the catastrophic war that has ravaged Gaza for two years. Yet, before we celebrate what many are calling a diplomatic triumph, we must reckon with two uncomfortable realities: this agreement bears disturbing similarities to the January ceasefire that collapsed within months, and it leaves virtually all the structural questions that initiated this conflict utterly unresolved.
Let us be clear about what happened in January and March 2025. A carefully negotiated three-phase agreement was signed by both sides, brokered by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar. It included hostage exchanges, prisoner releases, humanitarian aid provisions, and Israeli withdrawal commitments. And it held for exactly 58 days before Israel launched surprise airstrikes on March 18, resuming full combat.
The parallels are troubling. Then, as now, both sides proclaimed agreement on “first phase” terms while maintaining fundamentally incompatible visions of the endgame. Israel interpreted the deal as a temporary pause that preserved its right to resume military operations if Hamas did not fully disarm and recognize Israeli security dominance. Hamas understood it as the beginning of a permanent ceasefire leading to Israeli withdrawal and Palestinian self-governance. Both cannot be true.
The mechanisms that failed then—the reliance on mediators to enforce compliance, the absence of binding enforcement mechanisms, the agreement on process without consensus on outcomes—remain present now. We have essentially reset to the beginning of a game whose fundamental rules both players refuse to accept.
That said, the October agreement differs in one consequential way: the American posture. Trump’s investment in this outcome and his explicit threat to Hamas about hostage releases have created a degree of pressure that the Biden administration, for all its diplomatic efforts, never quite achieved. Trump promised consequences for non-compliance and appears willing to back those threats with tangible support for Israel.
This is neither entirely positive nor negative—it reflects a different calculation about how American power can be leveraged in the Middle East. Trump’s 20-point plan, with its proposed “Board of Peace” and international oversight, represents an attempt to create institutional structures that might stabilize a ceasefire. Whether Trump can maintain the political capital and sustained focus required for such an effort remains an open question.
More concerning is what this approach reveals about American strategy. The plan effectively treats the Israel-Hamas conflict as a discrete problem amenable to top-down diplomatic solutions, when it is in fact embedded within broader regional dynamics that cannot be negotiated away in a Washington-brokered agreement. The fate of this ceasefire will ultimately depend not on American pressure or international boards, but on whether key regional actors—particularly Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia—choose to maintain pressure on both sides, and whether Iran’s regional posture shifts in response.
More than 67,000 people have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, with 170,000 injured and the entire territory rendered largely uninhabitable. The January ceasefire revealed that even when fighting ceases, the logistics of reconstruction are staggering, and Israeli restrictions on building materials, equipment, and resources often remain in place.
The humanitarian imperative is undeniable. Gazans desperately need access to food, water, electricity, and medical care. Families must be reunited. The dead must be mourned. The current agreement’s provisions for humanitarian aid and the return of displaced persons to their homes are essential first steps. However, humanitarian access and genuine reconstruction are two different enterprises.
Real reconstruction—rebuilding housing, schools, hospitals, water and sanitation infrastructure—requires not just the entry of aid but the entry of cement, reinforced steel, generators, and heavy equipment. It requires freedom of movement for Gazans within Gaza and to the outside world. It requires an end to the blockade, not merely humanitarian pauses within it. The January experience suggests that Israel will resist full normalization of commerce and movement, viewing such restrictions as security measures against Hamas rearmament.
Here is the uncomfortable reality: no genuine reconstruction is possible without addressing the security concerns that drive these restrictions. This requires either (1) Hamas’s genuine disarmament and political transformation, or (2) the establishment of a post-Hamas Palestinian governance structure backed by Arab state security guarantees. Neither of these outcomes appears to be on the table in the current negotiations.
The central disagreement between the Trump framework and Israeli government demands is irreconcilable as currently stated. According to Trump’s plan, after Hamas hands over the captives, the war should be over. However, Israel says the war will be over only after Hamas disarms.
This is not a mere semantic difference. Netanyahu has consistently maintained that Israel’s war aims include the complete destruction of Hamas’s military and political capabilities. He has also indicated, through statements by senior coalition members and through policy, that long-term Israeli security control of Gaza—particularly the Philadelphi Corridor—remains a government objective. A March 2025 Israeli official statement revealed that Netanyahu’s government was exploring the formal annexation and resettlement of parts of Gaza, a goal fundamentally at odds with Palestinian self-determination.
None of this is to say that Israeli security concerns about Hamas rearmament are unfounded. Hamas has historically used ceasefires to rebuild its military capacity. The organization remains committed to armed struggle against Israel and has shown little interest in genuine political transformation or acceptance of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders alongside Israel. These are legitimate Israeli security considerations.
But they must be acknowledged for what they are: obstacles to a permanent peace settlement, not problems that military victory can solve. Israel cannot destroy an idea through firepower. Hamas cannot accept a permanent settlement that abandons Palestinian claims to territory it lost in 1967. These are structural contradictions that no amount of military pressure or international mediation will resolve.
The agreement’s silence on Palestinian political reconstruction is deafening. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, has been marginalized in Gaza for nearly two decades. Hamas, which administers Gaza, cannot be simultaneously disarmed and remain a political force. No credible Palestinian governance alternative has been built during the war.
Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace,” chaired by the American president and including international leaders like former British prime minister Tony Blair, represents an attempt to impose external governance on Gaza. Historically, such arrangements have mixed results. International administrations in Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere have struggled to build indigenous institutions capable of sustaining themselves once external support ends. Gaza faces additional complications. It is not an ethnically homogeneous territory, it has no tradition of democratic governance, and it has been ravaged by two years of warfare.
A more realistic approach would involve building indigenous Palestinian governance capacity from the ground up, with Arab states—particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia—providing security guarantees and economic support to ensure that any Palestinian-led administration does not become a haven for Hamas rearmament or Iranian influence. This requires a multi-year commitment and considerable Arab state investment in Palestinian governance.
The October ceasefire, if it holds, will reshape regional alignments. Saudi Arabia has invested considerable diplomatic capital in Gaza peace initiatives and in building its relationship with Israel. A stable ceasefire serves Saudi interests by maintaining momentum toward normalization with Israel. Egypt, which would bear the humanitarian and security burden of Gaza’s collapse, has an obvious interest in reconstruction and stabilization. Qatar has sustained its role as mediator and maintains influence within Hamas circles.
What remains uncertain is Iran’s response. Throughout the conflict, Iranian-backed groups have sought to expand the conflict beyond Gaza into Lebanon and the occupied territories. Whether Iran views a ceasefire as an opportunity to consolidate gains or as a setback to be addressed depends on variables well beyond Gaza itself—American policy toward Iran, Iranian leadership calculations about regional competition with Saudi Arabia, and the durability of international sanctions.
A prescriptive observation: any sustainable Gaza ceasefire must include regional security arrangements that prevent both Israeli military adventures and Iranian-backed reescalation. This requires coordination between American, Arab, and Israeli interests that does not currently exist in institutionalized form.
The January-March ceasefire failed because both sides discovered, once hostilities paused, that they had incompatible war aims that they had obscured through negotiations. Israel believed it had only paused the conflict. Hamas believed the agreement marked the end of the war. When March arrived, these contradictions became irreconcilable.
For this agreement to succeed, both sides must accept binding international arbitration or monitoring of compliance. Neither side currently trusts the other. Neither side has agreed to independent verification mechanisms with real enforcement power. Both sides have a track record of interpreting agreements to their maximum advantage.
The prescriptive requirements for success are therefore:
First, establish a credible international monitoring mechanism with enforcement powers—not merely mediators, but monitors with the authority to certify compliance and to recommend enforcement measures, which would primarily mean conditioning American military aid and Arab state economic assistance on compliance.
Second, establish clear, objective criteria for Hamas “disarmament” and Israeli “security compliance.” What does disarmament mean? Complete destruction of all weapons, or acceptance of a limited defensive force? What does Israeli security compliance mean? How much territory must Israeli forces vacate? What restrictions apply to Israeli military operations in the remaining zones? These must be negotiated explicitly, not left vague.
Third, link the humanitarian reconstruction and the movement of goods into Gaza to compliance metrics. Both sides need incentives to abide by the agreement beyond mere negotiated commitments. Economic reconstruction resources, trade access, and movement permissions should be conditioned on verified compliance.
Fourth, invest seriously in Palestinian governance capacity building before attempting to hand administrative authority to any Palestinian entity. This requires a multi-year, well-funded program led by Arab states and supported by international institutions.
This ceasefire agreement represents a necessary pause in a devastating conflict. It may succeed in securing the release of remaining hostages and bringing immediate humanitarian relief to Gaza’s suffering population. These are significant achievements that should not be minimized.
But it is prudent to maintain modest expectations about its long-term prospects. The fundamental conflicts that generated this war remain unresolved. Israeli claims to secure borders, Palestinian claims to self-determination, Hamas’s commitment to armed struggle, Israel’s refusal to accept Palestinian statehood under Hamas rule, and American and Arab regional interests in stability have not been reconciled. They have been papered over with language that both sides interpret differently.
The best realistic outcome is that this ceasefire holds long enough for urgent humanitarian needs to be addressed, for hostages and prisoners to return to their families, and for minimal reconstruction to begin. If that occurs, we will have achieved something meaningful, even if we have not solved the underlying conflict.
But we must not mistake a pause in fighting for a resolution of the underlying structural contradictions. And we must recognize that the greatest burden of ensuring this agreement’s success will fall not on international mediators, but on whether Israeli and Palestinian actors discover, through experience, that their long-term interests are better served through negotiated coexistence than through military competition for territorial and political supremacy.
That discovery has not yet occurred. Until it does, all agreements remain provisional.
Dr. Leon Hadar is a contributing editor with The National Interest, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, and a former research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He has taught at American University in Washington, DC, and the University of Maryland, College Park. A columnist and blogger for Haaretz (Israel) and a Washington correspondent for The Business Times of Singapore, he is a former United Nations bureau chief for The Jerusalem Post.
Image: Gaza Survival Journey / Shutterstock.com.