Gaza ceasefire deal: What it means for the Middle East

After almost a year-and-a-half of agony and suffering, millions in the Middle East, especially Israelis and Palestinians, are finally seeing a silver lining. If all goes well, after 466 days of desperate pleading, kidnapped Israelis and displaced Palestinians will at last begin the journey home. The bloodletting on both sides, leading to so many deaths and ruined lives, may finally stop.

The light at the end of the tunnel is an upcoming ceasefire-for-hostages agreement to be signed, within hours, between Hamas and Israel, mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt. It’s regarded as the first crucial step towards ending the war in Gaza.

A fragile deal

The deal is highly complex and has a lot of moving parts. At the heart of it is the gradual release, over a period of six weeks, of 33 out of the 98 Israeli hostages who have been held in the worst imaginable conditions in the Gaza Strip after they were violently kidnapped during Hamas’ brutal 7 October, 2023 mass terror attack on towns in Israel’s south.

In exchange, Israel will release more than 1000 Palestinians jailed in its prisons, many of whom are sentenced to life for their crimes, including the killing of multiple victims. Some of them will be deported to other Middle Eastern countries – possibly Turkey and Qatar.

The identity of the prisoners to be released is to be dependent on the “type” (children, women, soldiers, elderly men. etc) of Israeli hostages freed on the day. For instance, for each Israeli female soldier freed, 50 Palestinian prisoners will be released, including 30 serving life sentences.

But other parameters of the deal are also vital for its success. One key element is a gradual Israeli army (IDF) redeployment, as the implementation of the deal unfolds, out of the population centres, and along the Gaza border with Egypt (the Philadelphi corridor) and out of the so-called Netzarim corridor – a series of bases that control a ribbon of land a few kilometres wide that splits the Gaza Strip in half between north and south.

The military presence at Netzarim blocks movement of people, including terrorists, and of weapons and other products between the two parts of the strip, as well as from Egypt.

Defeated and almost powerless after an intense war that led to the demise of most of its leaders, Hamas needs both people and weapons to move within and into the Gaza strip to regroup and rearm.

Other important details of the agreement include a significant increase of aid flow (to 600 trucks a day) to the Palestinians in the north of the strip, and to the more than one million crowded in the humanitarian zone along the coastline. It also calls for the opening of the Rafah crossing with Egypt for people seeking medical care and commodities – though who will oversee this traffic remains somewhat unclear.

Within 16 days of the release of the first hostages, negotiations on a second stage of the deal are meant to begin, which would see a permanent end of hostilities, the freeing of the rest of the hostages, the release of more Palestinian prisoners, and a final Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Why is the deal being finalised now?

The main elements of the deal were on the table from at least mid-July, 2024. Yet, the circumstances did not mature for an agreement until recently. The main game-changer occurred when Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November.

Despite investing enormous efforts into the negotiations, the outgoing Joe Biden administration was struggling with both sides, unable to bring to bear effective leverages to get Hamas and Israel to compromise.

By the end of his term in office, Biden’s relations with the Israeli government, headed by veteran Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners, were characterised by a mutual lack of trust. This is despite his unwavering support of Israel since 7 October, reflected, for example, by the unprecedented and massive supply of military necessities to Israel.

Trump’s imminent return to office broke the deadlock. Committed to his election promise to end wars (including in Ukraine) the President-elect threatened to release “hell” on the Middle East unless a deal is finalised by the time he enters the White House on 20 January.

In early January he promptly dispatched his senior Middle East envoy/aid, Jewish businessman Steve Witkoff, to Israel and to Doha in Qatar, where the talks were being held, to send a strong message that all sides must now show flexibility – and quickly

Backing Witkoff’s uncompromising words was a collection of US carrots and sticks offered to all sides.

Faced with this new American approach, Netanyahu was forced to recalculate his positions, seeking to appease Trump and avoid trying to muddy the deal, despite his own political complications, with members of his own coalition opposing any realistic agreement.

Many in the Israeli right view Trump as almost a divinely-sent saviour for their cause. Indeed, almost all of Trump’s new top advisors and senior nominees, including on foreign policy issues, are staunchly pro-Israeli, including Marco Rubio, slated to be the Secretary of State, and the ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who is a fan of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The most right-wing politicians in Netanyahu’s government, most notably the ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have grave reservations about the release of terrorists in exchange for the hostages. However, they may swallow the bitter medicine in the hope that rewards from Trump to their cause would be worth it.

Moreover, even if one of them leaves the coalition, Netanyahu’s government is stable after the PM managed to lure into it the New Hope party from the opposition, having rewarded party leader Gideon Saar with the role of foreign minister.

In any case, the opposition promises to provide a safety net for the government’s survival to enable the passage of the hostage release deal – though not on other issues.

The Arab countries involved in the mediation efforts from day one also stand to gain or lose a lot from Trump’s renewed presidency.

Qatar had very warm relations with the Biden administration, and is desperate to maintain this status, despite its past close ties with Hamas. Particularly important for the Qataris is the continued US army presence in the strategic Al Udeid Air base, the biggest American base in the Middle East (currently contracted to remain in Qatar until at least 2032). This base protects Qatar from Iranian ambitions, and is also an important income source.

In Cairo, Egypt President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is eagerly awaiting Biden’s departure, after his administration withheld many millions in US military aid to Egypt over human rights issues, and just recently diverted other Egypt-bound aid funds to Lebanon.

Egypt desperately wants the Gaza war to be over, and to resurrect the heyday of maritime commerce through the strategic Suez Canal – a vital economic lifeline for Egypt.

Egyptian companies are eagerly hoping for a cut of the flow of money from rich Arab states and other sources that it is expected will flow through Egypt for the reconstruction of Gaza in the post-war period.

Shifting the power balance in the Middle East

On the other side of the equation stands the terrorists of Hamas. Trump’s aides explained that his “hell” threats meant, for example, a green light from Washington for Israel to “finish the job” and eliminate the remains of the terror group.

In line with the incoming president’s words, Israel released details of military plans and a possible humanitarian aid halt into some areas that would become operational if a deal was not signed.

On the ground, Hamas fighters have been reduced to disjointed guerrilla bands, as the IDF operated intensively in the north of the strip in recent months, and after Israel eliminated in 2024 both of Hamas’ senior commanders, the architects of 7 October – Mohammed Deif (July) and Yahya Sinwar (October). The latter’s younger brother, Mohammed Sinwar, is now in partial control of the weakened organisation, and is considering his options.

Moreover, Hamas now understands that Iran, its main patron, and its proxies will not come to their rescue as it had hoped.

Read more: Israel-Iran conflict: Its origins explained, and what could happen next

The geopolitical map of the Middle East has dramatically transformed to the detriment of Tehran. Since September, Israel has stunned the world with an unprecedented series of sophisticated operations, targeted killings of Hezbollah terror leaders in Lebanon, and strikes on all the group’s key weapons stores and factories that showed stunning intelligence penetration. This has considerably reduced the capabilities and influence of Iran’s most powerful proxy.

That in turn started a domino effect, which resulted in the dismantling of almost all the links in Iran’s chain of proxies.

In Lebanon, the anti-Iran pro-Saudi forces ascended to power, as was evident by the election (10 January) of Joseph Aoun as president of the country after a two-year deadlock.

The incoming US president can press forward with two important steps with respect to Iran.

The first is finalising a strategic alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the two most powerful nemeses of Iran.

Biden failed to attain his goal of open normalisation between the two countries – and Hamas’ 7 October terror may have also been designed in part to prevent this development.

Israeli-Saudi agreement is now possible, but the powerful Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, still needs a symbolic gesture representing hope of the Palestinians in order to advance ties with Israel.

Next on Trump’s list may be a new way to address the strategic threat of Iran’s nuclear project, which, despite Tehran’s denials, is aimed solely at achieving nuclear weapons capabilities.

Israeli retaliatory attacks on Iranian soil in April and October, after Tehran launched hundreds of projectiles at Israel a few days earlier, took all of Iran’s crucial air defence systems out of action.

This has opened the way for a possible airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. If the US decides to do this, it could destroy most of Iran’s atomic infrastructure in less than a day.

If the Iranian nuclear threat is removed one way or another (negotiations backed by the threat of an such airstrike are also an option), it would indeed be the dawn of a new era in the Middle East.

There are still a lot of open heavy questions that should be addressed. Specifically, who would control Gaza, and how to prevent Hamas from regaining its stronghold on the strip.

Yet, in the coming hours the focus will be elsewhere. Many have died and even more have suffered enormously since Hamas unleashed the deadly and violent terror of 7 October.

A deal to release the Israeli hostages from Gaza that leads to the end of the war would be a seminal event, likely redrawing the regional map.

Of course, first and foremost, it would be a tremendous godsend to Israeli and Palestinian families awaiting the day their loved ones are finally able come back home, and they can return to lives that feel safe and free.