That is a significant positive outcome from the ceasefire, and also the only positive outcome. In other respects, the ceasefire is a win for Hamas, a strategic loss for Israel and a guaranteed pathway back to conflict sooner rather than later.
President Joe Biden is talking up the outcome but the agreement is not “full and complete”, as he claims. Nor will its second phase produce “a permanent end to the war”.
It is right to say the “strategic equation in the Middle East region had now been changed” but the reason for this change is Israeli military power filling a vacuum of declining American influence in the region under presidents Barack Obama and Biden.
Incoming president Donald Trump’s promise to make “all hell break out in the Middle East” if the hostages were not released before his inauguration forced the hands both of Hamas and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
It may be that Netanyahu feels he needs to go along with Trump’s pressure to sign a ceasefire before the inauguration. I stress “go along with”. In dealing with Israel’s strongest supporter, Jerusalem needs to accommodate Trump’s political priorities.
The ceasefire is the result of Hamas’s military weakness but abiding political strength and, conversely, the result of Israeli military dominance, but a weakening international political position.
Hamas has been roundly defeated in battle. It is still firing basic rockets from Gaza into Israel but will take years (if ever) to rebuild the offensive capabilities it used to mount its attack into southern Israel in October 2023.
Hamas has also damaged its position with its financial backers in Iran. The attack on Israel set in motion the defeat of Hezbollah, the retreat of Iranian support for Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, now deposed, and the military humiliation of Tehran by Israel.
So, a weakened Hamas calculated it had to give ground on releasing hostages or face military annihilation.
By contrast, Israel has rebuilt a dominating military position in the Middle East since the disaster of not anticipating the Hamas attack. Over 15 long months Israel found only a few hostages, and the prospects for finding them this year looked slim.
This reality has forced the two sides into accepting an outcome neither wanted: Hamas was determined not to hand over the hostages – it resisted doing that during months of negotiations. Surrendering the hostages would lose the terror group’s one position of advantage over Israel and make Hamas vulnerable to future military strikes.
Israel’s war aim after October 7, 2023 was to destroy Hamas as a military power and the political bosses of Gaza. The ceasefire with Hamas amounts to a tacit acceptance that the group has won a political victory: It’s still running Gaza.
Israel has suffered a terrible and unjust loss of its international position. It had to fight this war, and did so with as much regard for innocent lives as any modern military could apply.
It’s undeniable, though, that Israel’s international political position has weakened, even as its military damaged its enemies and rebuilt deterrence in the region.
In the Middle East ceasefires are made to be broken. Once the hostages are returned – and once Gaza receives Hamas operatives released from Israeli prisons – what then?
The reality is that Hamas will use the ceasefire to reassert political control in Gaza.
Once Israeli military forces leave Gaza’s main population centres there will be nothing to stop Hamas engaging in a brutal reassertion of control. This comes just days after Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, condemned Hamas for using Gazans as “human shields.”
A large number, probably the majority of Palestinians in Gaza, supported Hamas all through this conflict. They will see the ceasefire as a political victory.
The two-state solution remains a distant pipe dream. No Palestinian political group in Gaza or the West Bank supports a two-state solution. The ceasefire will cement the view among this group that armed resistance may be costly and long-term, but the objective of wiping Israel off the map remains.
The Western determination to press for peace at all costs has not delivered a lasting or sustainable political solution towards building two states coexisting side by side.
Support for a two-state solution in Israel is at a nadir and will remain that way as long as Israelis cannot identify a Palestinian partner to work to achieve that objective.
Israel will return to its strategy of “cutting the grass” – attacking identified locations in Gaza where Hamas rockets and military capabilities threaten Jewish lives.
The broader strategic competition will continue between Iran and Sunni Arab states.
Russia will try to sustain its faltering position in Syria. Trump will promote a Saudi accord with Israel. Iran’s short sprint to developing nuclear weapons is imminent.
May the hostages those still living, rejoice, recover and rebuild their lives. Sadly, nothing else has been resolved around fundamental strategic fault lines in the Middle East.
Peter Jennings is director of Strategic Analysis Australia.
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We should celebrate the human triumph of seeing Israeli hostages returned to their loved ones – if indeed that happens in coming days.