The current round of turmoil in the Middle East began in the Gaza Strip, when Hamas terrorists stormed across the border into Israel early in the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, murdering, raping and abducting men, women and children with abandon.
It may well end there.
That prospect is perhaps not so clear right now, given the situation in the broader region. With the U.S. administration transfixed on Iran—teetering between threats of an intensified war in one moment and guarded hopes for an agreement with the Tehran regime in the next—Gaza has taken a backseat in the past few months. Other parts of the region have also leapt into the foreground, such as Lebanon, where expectations of a Lebanese-Israeli peace agreement are building up; and Syria, where the Islamist regime that replaced Bashar Assad’s dictatorship continues to enjoy Washington’s goodwill.
Gaza, however, has become further mired in an uneasy stalemate between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas that, at present, is more likely to resolve through renewed fighting than a diplomatic agreement.
Since the ceasefire in October last year, the IDF has acted prudently, maintaining a strong presence on the eastern side of the “yellow line” that separates Israeli from Hamas-controlled territory, carrying out occasional targeted strikes against the terrorist presence, and closely monitoring land and maritime borders.
That posture has allowed Hamas to consolidate its power once again. It’s telling that the terrorist group’s first act after the ceasefire was to crack down on the growing dissent among Gazans who may not exactly love Israel, but do not want to be propelled into another war. The threat to Israel of another Oct. 7-style pogrom has been dramatically reduced following two years of war, but Hamas still retains around 20,000 armed men, tens of thousands of rifles, rockets and RPGs, and significant enough portions of its underground tunnel infrastructure, which it uses for weapons storage as well as for moving its fighters.
In other words, Hamas is in no mood to accept defeat and surrender control of the coastal enclave—and frankly, as long as it maintains this level of strength and fighting capacity, it has no reason to.
Hamas has also taken advantage of international dithering. The promised International Stabilization Force (ISF) for Gaza has yet to materialize beyond offers of troops from a handful of countries. That should not be surprising since governments are reluctant to risk their troops for an ostensible peacekeeping mission in a territory where the conditions for a return to war are ripening. Nor has the much-vaunted National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), designed to be a government of technocrats, been able to begin the work of actually governing.
Crucially, Hamas continues to refuse to disarm, rejecting one of the main requirements of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire.
At the end of April, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the “entire agreement relies upon [Hamas] disarming and demilitarizing”—until that happened, he continued, “all of it is in question.” Yet if anything, Hamas’s position has hardened to the point that it is insisting that it will not even consider disarmament unless Israel fully withdraws from Gaza. No Israeli government, whether led by current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or one of the opposition figures intending to unseat him in the election later this year, will ever agree to that.
Last week, clear signs emerged that the Board of Peace (BoP)—the multilateral organization launched by the Trump administration to oversee Gaza as its initial task—is losing patience with Hamas after months of faltering negotiations over disarmament. According to The Times of Israel, the BoP’s High Representative for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, penned a letter to Hamas leaders signed by himself and U.S. adviser Aryeh Lightstone, warning that all the undertakings accepted by the parties to the ceasefire would be nullified absent their disarmament.
“Failure by Hamas to accept the framework within a reasonable timeframe, as determined by the Board of Peace and after consultation with the parties, shall render such commitments null and void,” the letter reportedly stated.
Even more significantly, the BoP told Hamas that Israel could not be expected to refrain from attacks if the disarmament process fails to make progress.
This may be, unfortunately, what Hamas wants. Disarmament will strip away the material basis of its power, compelling the terrorist group to negotiate a final settlement with Israel, a nation it seeks to destroy. The fact that a return to war will visit further misery on the people of Gaza is not something that worries Hamas, which has always elevated its mission above the welfare of those it rules with an iron fist.
Hamas also knows, after two years of war, that its strategy of using the Gazans as human shields will never be acknowledged, much less condemned, by large swathes of world opinion—not by its groupies like the governments of Colombia, South Africa and the other members of the so-called “Hague Group” targeting Israel at the International Court of Justice; not by its sympathizers in Europe, such as the governments of Ireland and Spain; not by the legions of antisemitic Hamas supporters itching to relaunch their daily demonstrations; and certainly not by media outlets like the Qatari propaganda station Al Jazeera, which is now claiming that the profusion of fancy restaurants in Gaza is another indication of the “genocidal reality” imposed by the Israelis!
For Israel, a return to war will be an opportunity to finish the job begun by the IDF in the wake of Oct. 7, but there is no guarantee of success. As long as there is a gap between restating the entirely legitimate goal of dismantling Hamas and achieving it, there will be a list of questions without ready answers.
These include: Should Israel reconquer Gaza? What will happen to the population of Gaza in a renewed conflict? Will they be corralled into safe zones? Will a new bid to secure their voluntary emigration from the territory come to fruition? Can the IDF fight an effective war in Gaza while it is still forced to focus on the threat from Hezbollah in Lebanon and the destabilization tactics of an Iranian regime that has survived the U.S.-Israeli war against it, battered but intact? Will key Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates continue to keep their distance from Hamas, or will they be swayed?
And perhaps most worryingly of all, how much leverage will the Israelis retain if the war is still ongoing once Trump leaves office after the 2028 election?
How these issues are resolved—and over what timeframe—will determine whether a new Middle East emerges from the rubble of war or whether the old one survives, symbolized by the retrenchment of Hamas.
