Why Israel and Hamas Might Finally Have a Deal

The war in Gaza may be on the verge of ending. It began two years ago, when Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel, killing nearly twelve hundred people and taking two hundred and fifty hostage. Israel then commenced a military campaign in the Gaza Strip. During that time, more than sixty-seven thousand Palestinians have been killed, and more than a hundred and sixty-nine thousand have been injured; a United Nations commission recently described Israel’s actions as genocide. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has continued to steadfastly support the Israeli government, even when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a complete cutoff of aid into Gaza for more than two months. But Trump has also grown tired of Netanyahu’s unwillingness to stop a war that Trump himself wants credit for bringing to a close. Last week, in Washington, Trump pressured Netanyahu into accepting a deal that would trade the approximately twenty remaining Israeli hostages for some two thousand Palestinians currently held in Israeli jails, and call for Hamas fighters to disarm in exchange for amnesty. The plan also envisions an international board—chaired by Trump—to oversee Gaza for at least a temporary period.

I recently spoke by phone with Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to try to understand what a deal might look like and why it might finally be close to happening. A former State Department employee, Miller played a role in Middle East peace negotiations across multiple Administrations—most notably under Bill Clinton. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Netanyahu felt more pressure to agree to a deal this time, Hamas’s calculations about previously refusing to release hostages, and why long-term hopes for peace—let alone for a Palestinian state—remain so unlikely.

Why does this time feel different in terms of the prospects for a deal? Why now, in other words?

I think there are three factors, and they’ve been hovering for a while, but now they have more or less all come together. First, I really do think that Hamas, even though there’s a major split between the external and internal leadership, has reached the point where political survival is going to outweigh ideology. That has increased the margin for maneuver. Some of the Hamas hard-liners who planned October 7th have been killed by the Israelis. And there was the September 9th strike on Qatar, the base of Hamas’s political wing, and the site of negotiations throughout the war. [On that date, Israel bombed a residential neighborhood in Doha in an attempt to kill Hamas negotiators. Netanyahu, at Trump’s urging, later apologized to Qatar’s Prime Minister.] That paradoxically generated the current resolve and intensity to get a deal, and I think it has brought even the internal leadership to this realization.

By internal, you mean the military leadership within Gaza?

Yeah. I mean the brigade commanders, particularly Izz al-Din al-Haddad, who commands the Gaza City brigade. The Israelis are really focussed on Gaza City. They believe that Gaza City is where the remnants of Hamas’s organized military force are. They really are remnants at this point. They’re operating now in small teams with very little command and control—capable of insurgency, but no longer what you would call an organized or conventional military that can use rockets or mount cross-border incursions. So I think there’s growing pressure.

But that factor would not be determinative alone. Then you come to the second factor, which is that the Trump Administration, frankly, has succeeded with all of its courting and focus on the Gulf states. For this President, it’s an intersection of his financial interests, the Trump Organization’s business interests, the flattery, and the authoritarian delight that he derives from dealing with leaders who have no democratic constraints and can do basically anything. They got the gift of the plane from the Qataris. [Qatar gave a Boeing 747 to Trump, who is expected to use it as Air Force One.] All of that combined to help the Administration create more pressure on the Gulf states. And the Qataris have now been struck twice as a consequence of Israeli actions. The first was when the Iranians retaliated symbolically after the American strike on the three Iranian nuclear sites, in June. [Iran, with advanced warning to prevent escalation, struck a Qatari airbase that houses American forces.] The Qataris want to be players. And now they are able to say that they pushed the President, which gives them more heft and more reach for a small country. At the same time, they don’t want to lose their relationship with Hamas, but they do want this over, and they don’t want more Israeli strikes on Doha.

Trump has also been pushing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey, with whom his relationship has gotten warmer. There are two main state supporters of Hamas other than the Iranians: the Turks and the Qataris. So Trump has sort of informally put together a coalition.

But let’s be very clear that Hamas’s newfound flexibility would not by itself have brought about this deal. The third factor is the key, and I must say I don’t believe in transformations, game changers, sea changes, or inflection points, but there has never been an American Presidential push on Israel like this, with the possible exception of the ultimatum Dwight Eisenhower made to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion that he would impose political and economic sanctions in 1956.