A Cease-Fire in Gaza Might Be the Easy Part. Fulfilling It Will Be Harder.

Even as Hamas and the Israeli government appear to be inching closer to a cease-fire agreement, analysts are deeply skeptical that the sides will ever implement a deal that goes beyond a temporary truce.

At issue is a three-phase agreement, proposed by Israel and backed by the United States and some Arab countries, which if fully realized could eventually see the total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, the return of all remaining hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack and a reconstruction plan for the territory.

But making it to that finish line is impossible if the parties are unwilling to even start the race or to agree on where it should end. Fundamentally, the wrangling is not just about the how long a cease-fire in Gaza should last or at what point it should be implemented, but whether Israel can ever accept a long-term truce as long as Hamas retains significant control.

For Israel to agree to Hamas’s demands for a permanent cease-fire from the start, it must acknowledge that Hamas will remain undestroyed and will play a role in the territory’s future, conditions Israel’s government cannot abide. On the flip side, Hamas says it won’t consider a temporary cease-fire without the guarantees of a permanent one that effectively ensures its survival, even at the cost of countless more Palestinian lives, lest Israel restart the war once its hostages are returned.

Yet after eight months of a grinding war, there are signs that the sides could be moving closer to the first proposed phase: a six-week conditional cease-fire. While that step is hardly guaranteed, getting to the plan’s second phase, which envisages a permanent cessation of hostilities and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, is even more unlikely, analysts said.

“It is wrong to see this proposal as more than a stopgap,” said Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “Most important, this plan doesn’t answer the fundamental question of who rules Gaza after the conflict. This is a cease-fire plan, not a day-after plan.”