Thousands of Hamas fighters have reemerged from hiding and deployed to restore control.
“In no uncertain terms, Hamas is not only still standing, it is still the most important force in Gaza,” said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator and president of the US/Middle East Project, a London-based research organization. New York. .
The situation underlines the fragility of the agreement reached with Netanyahu, who faces tremendous political pressure at home. It also comes as Donald Trump is re-sworn in as US president amid widespread uncertainty about how he plans to deal with a landscape in the Middle East that has changed greatly since his first term.
And the war is not over. The three-phase ceasefire agreement, which is largely unchanged from a plan former US President Joe Biden announced eight months ago, is extremely fragile, as evidenced by the tension-filled delay in starting it on Sunday morning. . It will be 16 days before the scheduled start of talks on the second phase.
Moving from this first phase to the second, which would really mark the effective end of the war, with the almost complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, is considered by many to be enormously difficult, even inconceivable, given the necessary concessions and political conditions. dynamic on both sides.
Many gave Trump credit for demanding that Netanyahu reach this deal now, providing the Israeli Prime Minister with the cover to do so. It is not yet known whether Trump and his team, with so much more on their plate, will devote the time and influence to overcome the next, most complicated phase.
“Trump will not want fighting to resume on his watch,” said Natan Sachs, director of the Middle East Policy Center at the Brookings Establishment, a Washington research institute. But Netanyahu, facing strong opposition to the deal within his own coalition, “does not want to end the war, and Hamas also intends to continue its military struggle and rearm,” Sachs said.
Netanyahu is likely to seek any violation of the truce terms by Hamas as “justification for why phase two cannot and will not happen,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham Home. , a London research institute. “And it will be very harsh with the conditions of the Israeli withdrawal.”
The agreement may end the fighting for now, but as in Lebanon, it gives Israel and its military “the perpetual freedom to act,” Vakil said, referring to the ceasefire signed in November with Hezbollah, the militia based in Lebanon. Netanyahu said in an address to the nation on Saturday that Israel “reserves the right to resume fighting if Israel concludes that negotiations on the second stage are futile.”
Netanyahu has consistently refused to discuss who or what will rule Gaza instead of Hamas, essentially ceding the territory to the group that Israel has spent the last 14 months trying to destroy, killing tens of thousands of people, both civilians and combatants, in the process. The war broke out after Hamas led attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and capturing about 250 more.
Now that Hamas has regained control of Gaza, it will effectively be in charge of a massive influx of humanitarian aid. Yahya Sinwar’s brother Mohammed now heads Hamas in Gaza.
Trump will also face a complicated and thorny choice about how much to invest his authority in the Middle East, especially if he wants, as he says he wants, to revive plans for the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. An agreement between the two countries appeared to be close to being finalized before the war in Gaza broke out.
Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said the ceasefire agreement was good for the Palestinians: “the killings will stop and the prisoners will be released from jail” and there will be an increase in humanitarian aid. But there were no guarantees that the agreement would hold, he said, adding that the Palestinians “need a real process that leads to the end of the Israeli occupation” of both Gaza and the West Bank.
The Saudis have made clear throughout the war that they now demand concrete steps on the path to an independent Palestinian state, something Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to prevent. And some of those around Trump favor further or even complete Israeli annexation of the West Bank, which could make a viable Palestinian state nearly impossible. His nominee for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said during a 2017 visit to Israel that “there was no such thing” as the West Bank or occupation.
“Annexation of the West Bank would end any possibility of a two-state solution,” Barghouti said.
At some point, said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. diplomat now at the Carnegie Endowment, “Netanyahu will come into conflict with Trump, who wants a deal with the Saudis and Iran.”
Even the Gaza deal presents a serious domestic political challenge for Netanyahu. One of the far-right parties in his coalition, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, resigned and promised to return only if the war restarts. If the coalition’s other far-right party, led by Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, also defects, Netanyahu would be heading a minority government nearly two years before the next election.
In addition to Gaza, Netanyahu also faces two thorny internal issues, a new budget and a bill on the recruitment of haredim or ultra-Orthodox people, which guarantees conflict with the extreme right and religious parties. The budget is important. If it is not approved by the end of March, Sachs said, the ruling coalition automatically dissolves.
“There could be a current political crisis, so we may see Trump versus Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as we approach phase two,” Sachs said.
Those political considerations could come to a head if Trump determines to push for a deal with Saudi Arabia and present Netanyahu with a difficult choice.
The Israeli leader could give in to his coalition partners, delay a deal and likely anger his most important ally, the United States. Or he could dissolve the government and call elections based on working with Trump to achieve a more lasting regional peace, including real steps toward a Palestinian state.
That last option would present an appreciable risk to Netanyahu, whose unpopularity among centrist voters forced him to join Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in the last election.
Looming above all is Iran, which is enriching uranium to the brink of weapons grade at a rapid pace. Iran denies it is aiming for a bomb, but it is greatly diminished regionally and its economy is sinking. Israel and the United States have vowed to prevent any Iranian nuclear bomb, and there is a strong argument within Israel that now is the time to attack Iran.
But Trump is thought unlikely to want to be drawn into another war, and is said to be open to a deal with a weakened Iran. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has reached out to European diplomats and Trump officials to tell them that his country also wants a deal on its nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions.
Trump is essentially unpredictable, Sachs said. Netanyahu and the Israelis, he said, “will face an American president who will certainly be very pro-Israel – and whose favor they are eager to receive – but who will also be forceful in demanding what he believes is in their interest.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Steven Erlanger
Photos by: Arash Khamooshi and Kenny Holston
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
