Hamas is playing for time in Cairo, Doha, and Gaza. It hopes that Israel has gambled on extending a ceasefire deal, and that it can hold out and get the best of both worlds.
What are the best of both worlds for Hamas? It wants to keep the ceasefire going, which began on January 19, while not having to hand over any more hostages as it drags out talks.
This is because Hamas agreed to the first deal back in mid-January of this year, primarily because incoming US President Donald Trump sent envoy Steve Witkoff to press Israel and Hamas to agree to the deal.
Qatar, which hosts Hamas, got the terrorist group on board. Hamas essentially agreed to a deal on January 17 that it had already agreed to many months ago.
Hamas always wanted a slow deal, with hostages released in small numbers over months, followed by an end to the war. It assumed that once Israel stopped fighting, inertia would keep the war from restarting.
Today, with Trump and Witkoff no longer laser-focused on the deal and instead dealing with other issues such as Russia and Ukraine, Hamas assumes that it can go back to the way things were in the summer and fall of 2024.
However, Hamas has a trick up its sleeve. It remembers March 2024 when it got Israel to basically do a de facto ceasefire during Ramadan.
At the time, the Biden administration pressured Israel to reduce the intensity of fighting in Gaza. Israel did so, and Hamas got a reprieve. Now it wants even more.
First ceasefire deal
Hamas remembers the first ceasefire deal in late November 2023. Under that deal, it released around a dozen women and children hostages per day. However, by December 1, 2023, it was unwilling to release more women and children hostages.
Instead, the terrorist group said at the time that it would turn over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her children Kfir and Ariel, as well as their father Yarden.
NPR noted then that “Hamas, in a statement issued Friday afternoon local time, said Israel ‘bears full responsibility’ for the breakdown of the ceasefire. In all-night negotiations, the Islamist [terrorist] group said it ‘offered to exchange prisoners and the elderly [and]... offered to hand over the bodies of those killed and detained as a result of the Israeli bombing.’”
The New York Times added, “Hamas also proposed exchanging the children’s father, Yarden Bibas, who it says is still alive, for a few dozen of the longest-serving prisoners.”
At the time, Israel had rejected this, and fighting immediately resumed when Hamas violated the deal. Today, Hamas knows that the 42-day deal that began on January 19 has ended, and it doesn’t think Jerusalem will invade Gaza again. Israel just left the Netzarim corridor and other areas and redeployed the 162nd Division from Gaza after 500 days of combat, for example.
Hamas made it clear it rejects extending the deal. Israel thinks extension is the best way to get more hostages but not end the war.
Israel’s leadership doesn’t want to end the war because they have promised total victory in Gaza. They also now claim to want to follow a plan proposed by Trump to empty Gaza of some or most of its residents.
The president repeatedly says that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can do whatever he wants. However, Israel has not come up with a clear plan or strategy.
There is no feasible way to empty Gaza of people at the moment. There appears to be no clear plan to remove Hamas, replace it, or “defeat” it as the governing and military power either. Hamas assumes that Israel has no plan.
However, the terror group has seen Israel declare victory in Gaza over the years and leave. It assumes Israel likes talking about victory but not actually achieving it. Hamas knows that in any power vacuum in Gaza, it will return to control.
Can the Trump administration help Israel get a deal? That’s a big question. Hamas wants to end the war and get Israel to leave Rafah. It doesn’t want to extend the deal unless it gets many more prisoners returned. Eventually, Israel may run out of prisoners to release. Hamas released a video of freed hostage Iair Horn and his brother Eitan over the weekend. Eitan is still held in Gaza.
Hamas also knows Israel is at an impasse in negotiations. It knows that the Jewish state has moved the talks to a more political level and that it stalled for time because of claims by Israel’s leadership that they wouldn’t go into phase two.
While Hamas faced some diminishing returns in parading hostages, preferring a quiet release last week as the first stage of the deal came to an end, the terror group also feels it can pressure Israel. At the end of the day, it is playing a high-stakes and dangerous game.
However, the group also knows that in the past, Israel was not very good at negotiating ceasefires. It assumes now that Israel has a ceasefire, it will have a hard time jumping right back into the war. If Hamas can get Ramadan as a ceasefire and not return more hostages, it will have won. If it feels pressured by a return to fighting, it might reconsider.
However, it showed in 2024 that fighting doesn’t necessarily pressure it as long as it holds on to the central camps in Gaza and holds hostages.