Hamas is playing for time in Cairo, Doha, and Gaza. It hopes that Israel has gambled on extending a ceasefire deal but that Hamas can hold out and get the best of both worlds.
What is the best of both worlds for Hamas? It wants to keep the ceasefire that began on January 19 going and says that it won’t need to hand over any more hostages as it drags out talks.
The reason for this is that Hamas agreed to the first deal back in mid-January 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 Hamas on board. Hamas essentially agreed to a deal on January 17, 2025, that it had already agreed to for many months.
Hamas always wanted a slow deal, with hostages released in small numbers over months and then an end to the war. Hamas assumed that once Israel stopped fighting, the intertia would keep the war from re-starting.
Today, without Trump and Witkoff 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 the fighting in Gaza. Israel did so, and Hamas got a reprieve. Now, Hamas 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, Hamas at the time said it would turn over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her children Kfir and Ariel, as well as their father Yarden.
At the time, NOR noted, “Hamas in a statement issued Friday afternoon local time said Israel ‘bears full responsibility’ for the breakdown of the cease-fire. In all-night negotiations, the Islamist militant 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 Israel will invade Gaza again. Israel just left the Netzarim corridor and other areas. Israel redeployed the 162nd Division from Gaza after 500 days of combat, for instance.
Hamas made sure to make it clear it rejects extending the deal. Israel thinks an 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. Trump says again and again that Israel’s Prime Minister 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 removing Hamas or replacing it or “defeating” it as the governing and military power. Hamas assumes that Israel has no plan. Hamas has listened to Israel over the years declare victory in Gaza and leave. It assumes Israel likes talking about victory but not actually getting to victory. Hamas knows that in any vacuum of power in Gaza, it will return to power.
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 a lot 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 that Israel is at an impasse in negotiations. It knows Israel has moved the talks to a more political level and that Israel stalled for time because of claims by Israel’s leadership that they wouldn’t go into stage 2. 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, Hamas also feels it can pressure Israel. Hamas 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 is assumed now that Israel has a ceasefire, Israel 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, so long as it holds on to the central camps in Gaza and holds hostages.
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