The Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Deal and What Comes Next

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After 15 months of a grueling war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Israel and Hamas agreed to phase one of a ceasefire deal on Wednesday. The agreement will create a pause in fighting that will allow critical aid to reach Gaza, and begin an exchange of hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

But the next phases of negotiations are expected to be more complicated — and it’s unclear if this pause in fighting will hold. 

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On today’s Big Take podcast, Israel bureau chief Ethan Bronner and Fares Alghoul, who covers Gaza, join host Sarah Holder to discuss the details of the ceasefire deal, how it finally came together, and what lies ahead for Israel, Gaza and the region. 

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Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:

Sarah Holder: After 15 months of war in Gaza, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire deal on Wednesday, mediated in part by Egypt, Qatar and the US. The Qatari foreign minister announced the deal at a press conference:

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani: We will continue to do everything we can, everything possible together with our partners to ensure that this deal is implemented as it’s agreed.

Holder: Under the terms of the agreement, Israel and Hamas will stop their fighting, at least for now, allowing critical aid to reach Palestinians in Gaza. Over the course of days, beginning this Sunday, 33 hostages are expected to be released, and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be freed.

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CBS News:  Right now people are crossing their fingers. Gaza celebrations. Families of hostages holding on. 

Holder: As Qatar’s foreign minister finished his remarks, President Joe Biden held his own press conference. 

Joe Biden: …. I’m proud to say Americans will be part of that hostage release in phase one as well.

Holder: This ceasefire deal is the first step towards ending the war between Israel and Hamas, which has killed 46,000 thousand people in Gaza, more than 1,000 people in Israel and decimated the Gaza strip. But Israel Bureau chief Ethan Bronner told me — it’s not a guarantee of a permanent ceasefire.

Ethan Bronner: Let’s not let this broadcast go without it being said, that that it could easily end after six weeks, this deal, that they could not come to an agreement on the next phase, 33 hostages will leave and the others will stay and the war will begin again. That is a totally imaginable outcome.

Holder: I also spoke with Bloomberg reporter Fares Alghoul, who’s from the Gaza Strip.

Fares Alghoul: Because the ceasefire talks have been thorny, the mediators seem to have preferred that both sides agree on the easiest things, and they postpone the more difficult issues to the next phases.

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Holder: Today on the show: Ethan and Fares explain how this ceasefire deal was reached, why now, and what the next phases of negotiation will look like. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I’m Sarah Holder.

Holder: Thank you so much, Ethan, for being here. We’re talking around 1 p. m. in New York, 8 p. m. in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. News has just broken that Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire deal. What do we know as of now about what is in that deal?

Bronner: Well, we think we know a fair amount. In theory, what happens is over the next, uh, six weeks, 33 Israeli hostages, mostly living, but some dead, will be released by Hamas who’ve been held in captivity for 15 months. In exchange, many hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons will be released. Simultaneously, Israel will withdraw from major population centers. Its troops will be withdrawn from major population centers in Gaza to the outskirts of the Gaza strip. And at the same time, from the first day there will be approximately 600 trucks of aid, pouring into Gaza to help those who are in need and many are in very severe need.

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Holder: When will phase one of the deal start and when will that second stage begin?

Bronner: As you said, we’ve just heard that the deal has been concluded. The signature is up ahead of us. The Israeli cabinet needs to approve it probably on Thursday of this week. And there is also a 48 hour waiting period in Israel before something can begin. So, the expectation is that by Sunday, the understanding is that on that day, three hostages will be released. Then on the 16th day, the two sides will continue their indirect negotiations — they don’t sit across from each other, they don’t recognize one another — for the next phase, the goal of which is not just a six week pause in fighting, but a full end to the fighting. In exchange for which, the remaining hostages would be released. And, more prisoners will be released. And then the question of the security arrangement and so on for the Gaza Strip will also play a big role.

Holder: Biden announced American hostages will be among those released first. How is who’s getting released in this first phase being decided? 

Bronner: So they are all what are called humanitarian cases. And the definition in this particular case means women, including women soldiers, anyone over 50, children, and in this case there are only dead children, but children, and ill and injured. So that’s the 33. And we do not know if any or all will be living hostages. So there could be three bodies released on Sunday, or there could be three people.

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Holder: Do we know if agreement has been reached about the specific Palestinian prisoners that will be released?

Bronner: We have a general idea that there was a lot of back and forth about who would be released. We’re pretty sure that a couple of the most famous prisoners, particularly a man named Marwan Barghouti, who was seen as a potential leader of a Palestinian state one day, will not be released.

Holder: Ethan, this ceasefire deal is not unlike one that held for less than a week in November of 2023. It’s very, very similar to one that was almost agreed on in 2024. But it took months to get to this point, and after 15 months of war in Gaza, can you explain the factors that suddenly accelerated progress here?

Bronner: I think that the most important thing that changed is that an enormous amount of successful Israeli military activity occurred. Okay. Israel killed the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, Israel, uh, blew up in the pockets of thousands of people in Lebanon, Hezbollah activists, pagers and walkie talkies, and it killed the leader of Hezbollah as well, underground, and killed another leader, of Hamas in Iran, and it stripped Iran of many of its air defense systems. So there was a range of very powerful Israeli military accomplishments, and by the way, one other thing that happened, which wasn’t a direct consequence of Israeli military action, but indirect was the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. So an entire network of support system for Hamas has collapsed in that period, leaving Hamas in a position where it had fewer cards to play. Another thing that happened is, although the war continued and many thousands more people were killed in Gaza, many more places destroyed, there wasn’t really a sense in Israel, uh, that it was quote, unquote, winning the war definitively. And then another important factor, which is that, the far right of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet had, had been saying, if you end this war and cut a deal, we will destroy this government. We’ll walk out and end the coalition. In that time, the prime minister added another party to his ruling coalition, protecting him from that threat. And finally, and not in any way, least of all, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. The sense that, Trump is a very, very deep supporter and also a rather impatient and unpredictable man who came in and said, ‘get this thing over all hell is going to break loose. If you don’t cut this deal,’ somehow seems to have focused everyone’s mind. On both sides and all sides. And all those reasons together have produced this deal.

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Holder: I want to talk about Trump. How did his election kind of change the stakes, both for Netanyahu and for Hamas?

Bronner: Donald Trump, when he was president of the United States, from 2017 to 2021 was a huge supporter of Netanyahu and a right wing version of Israel and Zionism. So he moved the embassy, the American embassy to Jerusalem. He no longer declared settlements in the West Bank to be illegal. He recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. And he basically said, there’s no daylight here of any kind. Trump has basically made clear that there’s not going to be any limit on the kinds of weapons and the ammunition that he’s going to offer Israel. So it’s conceivable that on the Hamas side, the message was received that only more brutality is headed our way. On the Israeli side, it’s also true that Trump is basically saying, I’m here to help you, so if I’m making this request now, do it, okay? Because after this, there’ll be other stuff that you’ll want from me, and I’ll be more open to listening to it. That at least is the implication of how he talked to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

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Holder: How much political pressure has Netanyahu been under in Israel to bring those hostages home and to do anything to make that happen?

Bronner: I would say for the first half of this war, so for the first six or eight months, the pressure existed in the sense that people were on the streets, but there was an equal size of the population that believed that a trading, bringing back the hostages in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners who could go on to commit acts of violence against Israel was not worth it. Over the last four to six months, Israel has felt much safer. And it’s now a very strong majority for bringing home the hostages. And there’s an enormous, enormous desire, very deep, to bring them home. 

Holder: The war in Gaza has also damaged Israel’s economy. It’s harmed its relationship with allies. The country has been condemned by international bodies like the UN, and its leaders have been hit with arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for its wartime tactics that have displaced and killed thousands of civilians. How did these economic and political pressures and international scrutiny help bring Israel to the table for a deal right now?

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Bronner: The first part of the war, although the world condemned Israel, the feeling in Israel, not 100% but I would say the majority feeling was the world can condemn us all that it likes. We have to protect ourselves and that’s what we have to do now. Israel borrowed a record amount last year on the international Eurobond market in order to pay for this war. Taxes are going up to pay for the war. State salaries have been frozen. The VAT is going up. So it is a painful time. Once the sense that that need for protection would diminish because of the victories that we’ve been talking about, then I think people, and people were eventually forced to look a little bit at what was happening in Gaza. Not that much, I must tell you, but some. And the condemnations. It all started to add up to, uh, listen, maybe enough is enough here. And we need to end this war. 

Holder: Coming up… what this ceasefire will mean for Palestinians on the ground in Gaza, and what could lie ahead for Israel, Gaza and the region if the ceasefire holds.

Holder: As the terms of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas began to come into focus, I sat down with Fares Alghoul. He’s a reporter from the Gaza Strip, who’s been covering the conflict from Canada.

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Holder: Fares, I want to talk about what this pause in the fighting, what the ceasefire deal could mean on the ground in Gaza. The war has been extremely devastating for Gaza, for its people, for its economy. We’ve talked about the scale of the destruction before. What can start to happen in these early days to change the picture there immediately? 

Alghoul: The pause will be an occasion for the Gazans to take a respite. So it will give them time to explore the destruction and to look for the missing ones who are believed to be dead. The deal also includes a return of the displaced Palestinians who were forced out of their homes in the north of Gaza Strip into the south. Now they are expected, after one week of the deal, if things go smoothly, to return back to Gaza, to north Gaza. There, they will find that most of their houses are destroyed. As we all know that two thirds of the houses in Gaza have been either destroyed or damaged. But for many Gazans, the ceasefire is just a respite and an opportunity to process their griefs.

Holder: Have you heard reactions from people in Gaza, from Palestinians there, to the ceasefire deal? How does it feel to hear this news after so long?

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Alghoul: Yeah I was talking to people, in the morning, in Gaza. The general mood, there in Gaza indicates happiness and comfort because it will be the first time that the daily killings are going to stop. They will be trying to sleep one night without having to worry about the hovering drones and aircraft and falling shells. But some people in Gaza blame Hamas for prolonging the negotiations. They say since this deal is not that much different than what was put by Biden, Hamas should have shown this flexibility earlier to save the Gaza Strip more destruction and more losses. Hamas has always stuck to its long standing demands for Israel to withdraw all its forces from the Gaza Strip and abide by halting all the attacks from the air and from the ground. In recent weeks, Hamas said it has shown flexibility on those two demands. And the feelings of the people are also bittersweet as they are still cautious because, uh, this is only the first, uh, phase. They are not sure if they will make it to the second phase of the deal or if the things will collapse.

Holder: And so there’s a fear that if those more complicated talks fall apart, the ceasefire could be lifted and fighting would resume.

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Alghoul: What I can tell, of the, I mean the chances of collapse are more than the chances of success in this deal.

Holder: This first stage offers people time to breathe, to sleep, to grieve. What kind of rebuilding could happen in this phase or even in the next phase?

Alghoul: Rebuilding is not clear yet when it comes, because the level and the scale of destruction is unprecedented, and it requires huge amounts of funds and donations, and logistical support on the ground. The first phase doesn’t address the day one after the war, the next day of the war in Gaza, who will be running the Gaza Strip? Will Hamas remain in power? Will it share the power with other parties, the Palestinian Authority? Based on what we see in the deal, Hamas is now accepting that the Israeli troops remain inside Gaza during the first phase of the ceasefire. But the ground forces will be positioned along Gaza-Israel border in a buffer zone, stretching from, 600, uh, meters to, one kilometers in some areas. So without a clear vision on who’s gonna run Gaza after the war. We are still far from the beginning of a reconstruction process, but we are getting close to the process to estimate and evaluate the damage. 

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Holder: What is a realistic timeline for a more systematic rebuilding of Gaza to start and to get people back in their homes and in their cities?

Alghoul: There have been multiple reports and studies about the Gaza reconstruction. Most of those reports estimate that we are years away from rebuilding and those years are needed just to remove the rubble. So, I mean, huge amounts of the donation and the funds will go to the rubble clearance and removal before the building starts. And all the reports suggest that this alone is going to take years.  

Holder: Ethan Bronner, the Israel bureau chief, says we’ll know more in the coming days and weeks about how negotiations for a more lasting peace will go – and if this pause in the fighting will hold.

Bronner: They will begin the really difficult negotiation about the next phase. So sometime in three to six weeks, we should have an indication of whether they’re going to be getting anywhere in terms of moving to the next phase. There are these deep divisions between the two, and so in many ways, it’s a tougher time for Hamas to get its way. One question that I think we’re facing is whether President Trump will push Israel to do something to include the Palestinian Authority in order to lure Saudi Arabia into a regional recognition of Israel and a relationship other than there is right now. So it’s hard to know where it’s going. 

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