Daniel Block
Foreign Affairs / January 17, 2025
On January 17, after more than a year of war, Israel and Hamas struck a cease-fire agreement. The three-phase deal, which kicks off next week, will stop the fighting for the 42 days. During that time, Israel will withdraw from the Gaza Strip’s most populated regions and allow aid convoys in. Hamas will release 33 Israeli hostages, and Israel will release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. The two sides will continue talking in hopes of securing the deal’s next two phases, which would free the remaining hostages and make the cease-fire permanent.
Given the war’s immense toll on Gaza—at least 46,000 Palestinians have been killed since the October 7 attacks—people everywhere have expressed relief about the deal. But the devastation and the ensuring, regional conflict have changed the world, and the future is murky. To better understand what the cease-fire will mean for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the Middle East, Foreign Affairs turned to Marc Lynch, a professor of political science at George Washington University and the director of its Middle East studies program. Senior editor Daniel Block spoke with Lynch shortly before Israel’s cabinet approved the deal. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What do you expect will happen in Gaza once the fighting ceases ?
Anything which stops the killing and allows Palestinians in Gaza to rebuild is welcome. But there are so many ways what happens on the ground could go wrong. I would keep an eye on the humanitarian assistance to get a sense of how things will play out. If you get a real surge of aid, not just food and medicine but also materials to rebuild shattered infrastructure, that could do an enormous amount of good to relieve the suffering of Palestinian civilians and put the cease-fire on a solid path. But throughout this conflict, Israel has agreed, under American pressure, to increase humanitarian assistance. And for the most part, it just doesn’t happen. So it’s entirely possible that you end up with an end to direct violence, but a surge of aid on paper that doesn’t actually mean very much for the people on the ground. People might still not be able to return to their homes and begin reconstructing.
Do you think Israel and Hamas will be able to keep the agreement ?
It’s going to be very difficult. My sense, unfortunately, is that it is very unlikely we move past phase one and toward a permanent peace. There are endless openings for spoilers on both sides, and serious disagreements remain about the details of the agreement’s next steps. In Israel, there are many people who would like to see this war prosecuted indefinitely. Maybe they want to keep northern Gaza as a permanent buffer zone. Maybe they want to depopulate it and resettle it completely. Maybe they want to try to completely destroy Hamas, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu originally promised. Or maybe they want perpetual war as cover for aggressive actions elsewhere, such as in the West Bank.
On the Palestinian side, there are plenty of opportunities for spoiler violence by hardliners, by militant factions who don’t like the way things are going, and by people who just want revenge for all the horrible things that have been done to them. If such violence occurs, the Israelis won’t respond in a positive fashion. Even if such violence doesn’t happen, Israel could claim they have evidence Hamas is reorganizing in ways that they say violate the cease-fire. They would then return to bombing. So I think anybody looking at this agreement can see how fragile it is.
American negotiators have been pushing the Israelis to agree to this type of deal for months. Why do you think the government only signed on now ?
Joe Biden’s administration has been pushing for this deal for a very long time, but they’ve never been willing to put any substantial or significant muscle behind it. They’ve never really placed any conditions on arms deliveries. What we’ve gotten instead has been an endless series of American officials complaining about Israel not doing this, or not allowing that, followed by an announcement of another shipment of weapons. And so if I’m Netanyahu, focused on my political survival and confident that Washington won’t really do anything, I really have no reason to take Biden’s team seriously. It’s absolute diplomatic malpractice.
But with the new administration coming in, there’s good reason for Netanyahu to try turning the page. There’s a sense inside of Israel that the war in Gaza has pretty much run its course. There’s not much more to be done through the current approach. So temporary peace is something that can be offered to Donald Trump. The question is what they expect in exchange, such as a green light for expanding control over the West Bank.
What might an end to the war mean for U.S. aims in the Middle East, such as an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement ?
Across the Arab world, the general sense is that the United States aided, abetted, and armed a genocide against the Palestinian people. A cease-fire that takes place after so many are dead and so much has been destroyed isn’t going to make them feel better about America. It is way too little, way too late.
But our partnerships with the Gulf states seem to be perfectly robust. The alliances haven’t changed. Arab leaders can’t afford to completely discard their populations’ opinions—that’s why, after Gaza, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman concluded that now would not be a good time to go ahead with normalization. But if his citizens are not seeing death and destruction on TV every day, this issue might fade in importance. So the cease-fire might create more leeway for Arab states to adopt unpopular policies and positions such as normalization, which will be a top priority for Trump, like it was for Biden.
Could the cease-fire tamp down on the regional fighting that’s taken place since October 7?
It’s hard to know. At one level, Israel might say it has achieved its strategic objectives. It has weakened Iran, the war in Gaza is essentially over, and Hezbollah is neutered. It might decide it can now move on to the next chapter. But you could just as easily see Israel saying, “we have an extremely hawkish, anti-Iranian U.S. administration coming in. This is time to finish the job.” It could then start a larger-scale war with Iran. And I think the answer is going to be very deeply intertwined with what Trump envisions for the region and with Israeli domestic political questions.
Let’s turn, then, to Israeli politics. How might the cease-fire shape what happens in the country ?
Israeli politics has really been consumed with October 7 and its aftermath since the attacks happened. That could change with a cease-fire and the return of the hostages. Talk could go back to the issues of democracy and institutions, like Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court, that motivated protests prior to October 7. Netanyahu’s opponents might regroup, gather the troops, and begin to mount a serious challenge to his leadership. Alternatively, they might choose to rescue his government if hardliners like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich leave the coalition in protest.
My sense, unfortunately, is that it is very unlikely we move toward a permanent peace.
Either way, those extremists do not want to see a return to normal politics. They want to continue to seize the opportunity of this ongoing crisis to push even harder on things such as further empowering Israeli settlers, or accelerating the annexation of the West Bank. Netanyahu also doesn’t want a return to normal politics, because that could spark renewed protests or even put him on a path to prison. [Netanyahu is on trial for corruption charges.]
Netanyahu has shown throughout his career that he has no intention of leaving office without a fight. And so I think that a lot of what we’re going to see, both in terms of compliance with the cease-fire and developments inside Israel, is going to be shaped by who Netanyahu aligns with in order to stay prime minister.
As Israeli troops pull back, who do you think will govern Gaza ?
What I expect in the coming weeks is some effort to restore the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, and possibly having this coincide with changes in the PA’s leadership and an infusion of money into the organization from the Gulf. The hope will be that the Palestinian Authority can do in Gaza what they do in the West Bank, which is to act as proxies for Israel, serving as a police force to maintain order, prevent resistance, and fight against Hamas.
But that’s a heavy lift. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank today is a shell of its former self. It is extremely unpopular and lacks almost all legitimacy, and it’s constrained by Israeli actions that have cut off its funding. It’s pressured by the relentless expansion of Israeli settlers and the Israeli military in the areas it ostensibly governs. And so I think this plan will run into some problems, to put it mildly.
Does that mean Hamas will remain in power ?
Hamas is obviously in a very difficult position. A lot of people in Gaza are really upset with them. They have been decimated organizationally and institutionally. They’ve lost international sponsorship. But that can’t erase the reality on the ground that Hamas remains the only political organization with actual capacity to control things in Gaza. If the cease-fire fails to rapidly improve Palestinian lives, and if no legitimate governing alternative emerges, the group could regain steam. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Israel’s war has driven more recruits into the ranks of Hamas than have been killed by Israeli actions.
I don’t see any evidence that we’re closer to a two-state solution.
Now, after October 7, there is no way Israel is going to allow Hamas any kind of formal participation in government. But if we’re actually looking at a move towards rebuilding governance in Gaza and rapidly delivering humanitarian assistance, I think there’s going to have to be some kind of tacit agreement to let Hamas continue to exist. That’s obviously unlikely, given how Israelis have dealt with Hamas in the past and the war aims that they’ve set for themselves. And even if they can keep such a tacit agreement in Phase One, the role of Hamas is going to have to be dealt with in any move to Phase Two—which is one of many reasons the cease-fire agreement is unlikely to yield durable peace.
I take it you do not see this deal as the beginnings of a two-state solution, as some government officials have suggested.
Absolutely not. I don’t see any evidence that we’re closer to a two-state solution. I co-authored an article in Foreign Affairs a while back arguing that Israel and the Palestinian territories constitute one state, and that one-state reality is now even more obvious. Israel is continuing to expand its presence in the West Bank, seizing territory and breaking down structures and rules that had given Palestinians space for independent governance. Before, some people would say that Gaza was under only indirect Israeli control via the blockade. Well, now it is also going to be under more direct Israeli control. The war and cease-fire agreement have only strengthened the one-state paradigm.
Some people will keep talking about a two-state solution as a way out, because that’s what they do. But it’s not going to happen. And now, it doesn’t look like the Trump administration is especially interested in pretending to seek a two-state solution. And so even talk of two states might simply disappear into the ether.
Daniel Block – senior editor
