War can all of sudden turn battle commanders into fastidious lawyers when it comes to terms. Protesters marching in the streets of London may be calling for a ceasefire, but that is not what either side in the Middle East wants to call the minimum four-day halt they have just agreed. Hamas calls it a “truce”, which will see 150 women and teenage prisoners released. Israel is calling it a “pause” — returning home 50 children and mothers. Brokered by the United States and Qatar, each side’s respective most trusted patron, it includes the option for Hamas to extend — whatever you call it — for the price of 10 hostages a day. Just don’t call it a ceasefire, please.
This uncharacteristic verbal precision, from both sides, tells us something. Neither wants anyone to mistake what they see as a temporary “truce” — or rather, “pause” — for the end of the war. For Bibi Netanyahu and the IDF, this is because it vowed after October 7 to rescue all its roughly 240 hostages and “destroy” Hamas.
For Yahya Sinwar and his fellow Hamas leaders, this is because October 7 was designed to bring Israeli society to its knees, forcing it to cough up all its more than 8,300 Palestinian prisoners — many of them its loyal fighters. Hamas would thus claim the crown of the entire Palestinian national movement from the fading Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. It is easy to see, with only one Israeli hostage rescued, Gaza City now mostly in ruins and more than 1.7 million Gazans now displaced, why both sides want this to go on. Even when it comes to their own terms — neither side is exactly winning.
Then why did they agree? For the Israeli war cabinet, meeting in “the Kirya,” as the IDF’s cubic headquarters in Tel Aviv is known, it was always a matter of when not if. Rescuing babies, very young girls and mothers from Hamas tunnels is what a traumatised public wants — immediately. Moreover, Israeli society expects prisoner exchanges and with a powerful hostages movement getting off the ground, the cabinet swung in favour of the deal once the army was behind it. The IDF needs time to recalibrate to take the campaign to the south, and given the terms Hamas was asking for were far lower than previous exchanges — the Gilad Shalit deal saw a single Israeli soldier swapped for 1,000 prisoners — it gave its blessing to the deal.
Even when it comes to their own terms — neither side is exactly winning
This is how it looked to the Israeli cabinet and the IDF top brass: not moving on an acceptable hostage would make the war harder to prosecute — with an increasingly frantic public demanding a return of the most vulnerable at potentially a rising price.
Only one Israeli coalition member, the extremist Itamar Ben Gvir, voted against the deal, with even his ultranationalist allies falling into line. Key to persuading the sceptics round the table was the clause in their cabinet vote that the war would restart and indeed head south once the deal had run its course. Not only the IDF, but the public want both the hostages and Hamas “destroyed.” Hence, it’s only a “pause.”
Hamas has been operating under two different logics. Like the IRA in its heyday, it can loosely be described as having a political wing based in Doha led by Khaled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh, which raises funds and undertakes international diplomacy and a military wing in Gaza, led by Yahya Sinwar. It is unclear the political wing even knew that October 7 was being planned and now, afterwards, they have diverging interests. Hamas in Doha know that the United States has already asked Qatar to expel the group and that Mossad clearly has the ability to assassinate them. Negotiating the hostage release is essential to them if they want to stay alive.
Yahya Sinwar and the military wing, believed to be hiding underground, having fled Israeli forces in the north of the strip to southern Gaza, are in another predicament.
Hamas’s elite Nukhba force, which stormed the fence, briefly occupied the kibbutzim and carried out the massacre on October 7 terrified Israel with its shock military skill. However, it was largely wiped out doing so, and the Hamas fighters inside Gaza have since the ground invasion began proved surprisingly ineffective. The north of the strip has been largely conquered with ease and very few IDF casualties.
Diplomats think Hamas is still too “euphoric” after October 7 to realise the calamity that has befallen Gaza — with its capital now in ruins and most of its people displaced. But cracks are beginning to show in Hamas’s grip on Palestinian society — as clips or posts cursing the “resistance” surface. Sinwar desperately needs these days to regroup, reorganise and ready themselves for Israel’s assault on the south. This is where he hopes to once again kill a spectacular number of Israelis. This is why it’s only a “truce.” Sinwar hopes, with his troops redeployed, he can fight on until an election-facing Joe Biden calls Israel off. That’s when he plans to emerge from his tunnels and pose smiling in the ruins for his victory picture.
