There have been countless instances during this war when a hostage deal seemed close. However, no instance was as close – save for the November 2023 deal – as the one involving the talks that are in progress right now.There are many reasons why, this time, this tentatively might stick.
Hamas’s 24 organized battalions are long gone; the IDF took the Philadelphi Corridor long ago; the military has begun to cut off half of northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave; Hezbollah and Syria are no longer active participants in the war; Iran has been weakened substantially by Israeli strikes; Once Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is dead.
Yet, the most significant aspect that could move a deal along is the threat issued by US President-elect Donald Trump that there would be “hell to pay” if a deal was not done before he was inaugurated on January 20.
In other words, while the laundry list of military and regional factors created pressure on Hamas, Trump’s coming into office serves as a pressure point both for Hamas and Israel.
Other pressure points are weighing on Israel. There is not much more that can be done against Hamas militarily that the IDF has not already done, including intensifying the operations in northern Gaza.
This has not changed facts on the ground so much, and Hamas, likely for the first time since mid-2024 – is now recruiting new fighters faster than the IDF is killing or arresting them.
There is not much more that the IDF can do to weaken Hamas’s proxy allies that it has not already done. There is also the string of daily-to-weekly losses by the IDF in Gaza, along with the ongoing harm to Israel’s legitimacy and the economy of the war.
Lastly, there is the matter of the continuing, gradual death of the hostages as time drags on.Mossad chief David Barnea was sent back to Qatar in an attempt to conclude negotiations in place of lower-level staffers.
Hostage deal not guaranteed
Why, then, might a deal before January 20 still fall through?
Fundamentally, despite Trump becoming the single most powerful individual in the world, he has very little power over Hamas, and the amount of power he has over Israel is also debatable.
Given that no one expects the US to use military force directly against Hamas, and America has never been part of its financial support, there are few levers of serious pressure.
Hamas also may be watching Trump’s recent public statements about taking over Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada and reach the conclusion that he sometimes has lots of bluster with little follow-through (reference Trump’s North Korea policy from his first term.)
Some believe that if no deal is signed by the time he enters office, Trump will give Israel a deadline for ending the war – deal or not – because he is against “forever wars” and is against the US – under his leadership – getting blamed, even indirectly, for promoting one by arming only one side in the conflict.
This could work.
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may also gamble that Trump will not want a public fight with a figure (Netanyahu) who was given a historic number of standing ovations in the US Congress – mostly by Republicans.
A whole Evangelical segment of the party may appreciate and support Israel and Netanyahu as much as Trump out of various religious beliefs.
This is the complex political and security-related background.
At a negotiation level, it is just not clear that there is an overlap between Netanyahu’s minimal deal idea and Hamas’s minimal deal idea.
In the negotiations in May-August, Hamas dropped its requirement that Israel withdraw from Gaza before talks restarted or before a first phase transfer of some hostages began.
Since then, based on reports, Hamas has allegedly grown even more flexible and enlarged the number of hostages to return in a phase 1 agreement – from 18 to 34.
Hamas insists on an end to the war
Hamas has also reportedly agreed to Israel maintaining some small presence in the Philadelphi Corridor during the first phase.
The terrorist group has insisted that part of the deal must include a guarantee to put an end to the war as part of Israel receiving the remaining hostages and that this commitment must be made upfront – even if only carried out later.
Saying that he wanted to be sure that Hamas could not regain control of Gaza and that finding a political replacement for it was not possible as long as the group maintained even disorganized military cells, Netanyahu has said he would not commit to ending the war, even at this stage, after so many military achievements.
There are also smaller disputes about how the deal starts, given that Hamas, seemingly led now by Sinwar’s brother, says it has lost contact with some of its various groups who were holding hostages.
Recent negotiations have focused on a shorter period of time in which Hamas could freely move around to establish which hostages were still alive.
There have been reports that Israel demanded the release of a small number of hostages in return, even for this period of days of a ceasefire.
Further, there are some debates about whether certain male soldiers can be included in the first phase of a “humanitarian release,” along with women, children, and the elderly – if they are known to be wounded. In such a case, the idea is that Palestinian security prisoners being released will get deported to regions that are not Palestinian areas.
What the sides seem to be grasping at is the possibility of an extended first phase – longer than the initially discussed 42 or 60 days – long enough for Hamas to claim it achieved an end to the war and short enough for Netanyahu to claim that he did not end it.
If the sides do cut a deal in the following days, it may be because Trump’s threats may finally get more specific.
If not, without more Trump threats that may come in once he takes office, this ambiguous, longer first-phase agreement may not get sealed before January 20.
Trump’s vague “hell to pay” statement may be too vague. Because, at the end of the day, all of the more minor debates about the deal are about Hamas trying to position itself to survive and regain control of Gaza as soon as possible and Netanyahu trying to nip this in the bud.
The president-elect may need to put concrete, specific pressure on one or both sides to get them to concede on what seem like smaller issues, given that the sides view every concession as part of the much broader framing of the post-war era.
Until then, the negotiations – which might have concluded in early 2024 during the Khan Yunis invasion, just before and after the Rafah invasions of May and July, and just before Sinwar was killed in mid-October – may continue to drag on without any obvious game-changing date on the horizon.