For all these reasons, Israeli society is deeply divided over the current agreement. There has already been political fallout in Itamar Ben-Gvir’s pledge to take his far-right Otzmah Yehudit party out of the governing coalition. This won’t topple the government, but it does render it less stable.

Haviv Rettig Gur examines the domestic political causes and consequences of the agreement with Hamas, and concludes by looking at the broader strategic and diplomatic context:

Hamas understands this moment as well as Benjamin Netanyahu. It needed to obtain just enough from an agreement to be able to claim a victory, and then to adhere to whatever is obtained in order to deny Netanyahu the political cover with Donald Trump for a return to war.

Ironically, that’s a position of weakness for Hamas, and Netanyahu appears to have taken advantage of it—and so there are more hostages coming out, a slower Israeli redeployment, and no guarantees of an end to fighting.

Yet Hamas retains one great advantage over Netanyahu: its bar for “victory” is extremely low. It doesn’t need to win; it doesn’t need to rebuild its capabilities. It only needs to be able to claim it survived, even if what survived is a bare fragment of the original organization, now reduced to sending teenagers to fight, overseeing a ruined economy, and unable to rebuild Gaza. The simple fact that it still exists is “victory.”

In fact, Khalil al-Hayya, one of the Hamas’s seniormost officials outside of Gaza, gave a speech yesterday declaring victory and touting the “military accomplishment” of the October 7 attacks. Nonetheless, Gur writes, Jerusalem has plans of its own:

Israel will work ferociously to build out the kind of intelligence infiltration in Gaza that it possessed in Lebanon. It will spend the cease-fire preparing the offensive Netanyahu seems to believe will be permitted him at the end of phase 1 [of the deal]. If this is indeed Netanyahu’s calculation, then the deal he will soon sign is a reasonable gambit and a serious strategy.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.