Written by: Riccardo Castagnoli
Supervised by: Victoriano Vicente Botella Berenguer
Edited by: Conley Austin
On December 19th, 2024, a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas entered into force in Gaza, halting the onslaught that has razed most of the Strip to the ground in the past fifteen months (Ewing, 2025; Shotter et al., 2025). The agreement followed months of draining negotiations brokered by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with the backing of the United States (Mills & Mackenzie, 2025). It involves three stages, the first of which started with a few hours delay, displaying the truce’s fragility (Boxerman, 2025). The deal should last 42 days and provide for the release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli prisons (Livni & Boxerman, 2025). Moreover, Israel will have to withdraw its forces from Gaza’s population centres to areas no more than 700 metres inside Gaza’s border with Israel, allowing civilians to return to what remains of their homes and a surge of aid into the enclave (Al Jazeera Staff, 2025).
The second stage will begin to be negotiated after the first two weeks and foresees the release of all remaining living captives by Hamas in return for the freeing of more Palestinians, as well as the beginning of a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip (Shotter et al., 2025). Should the conditions of the second stage be met, the bodies of the remaining deceased Israeli captives will be handed over in return for an internationally supervised reconstruction plan, which would give a start to the third phase (Al Jazeera Staff, 2025).
Hamas reclaimed the agreement as its victory and other Palestinian groups celebrated the ceasefire as the byproduct of heroic resistance (Kershner et al., 2025). Meanwhile, the Israeli security cabinet failed to reach a consensus inside the majority coalition. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened to leave the Netanyahu-led government if the war is not resumed after the first phase, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir withdrew his Jewish Power party, arguing that the ceasefire was dangerous since it came before the achievement of the main objective of the war started on October 7th, the eradication of Hamas from the Gaza Strip (Shotter et al., 2025). The loss of his two far-right allies would shake Netanyahu’s grip on power and might lead to early elections (Lovatt, 2025). Conversely, since its primary goal is to survive as a political organisation inside the Gaza Strip, Hamas hopes for a permanent ceasefire, its guarantee being the hostages they still hold, and their combatants signalled their presence and power, celebrating the agreement in the streets of Gaza City as soon as it entered into force, rallying consensus among the population (Rasgon, 2025; Tramballi, 2025).
Most world leaders and international organisations welcomed the ceasefire (European Council, 2025; Ewing, 2025), and the former and current US administrations claimed credit for it soon after its announcement (Lee et al., 2025). Although the approved plan was almost identical to the one proposed by negotiators appointed by then-President Joe Biden, several analysts agree that President Donald Trump’s election increased the pressure on Netanyahu to sign the deal (Ewing, 2025; Lovatt, 2025; McCready et al., 2025; Rasheed et al., 2025; Tramballi, 2025). Even though the EU did not mediate the ceasefire, its involvement may be crucial in the upcoming phases (Borrell, 2023). A spokesperson for the European Commission, Anouar El Anouni, stated that the EU was updating its plans to consider redeployment to Rafah after its mission has remained dormant since 2007 (Joyner, 2025; Rasheed et al., 2025). While European states have all backed pauses in hostilities to limit the suffering of the Palestinians, their efforts will likely concentrate on a medium and long-term resolution to the Palestinian issue as a whole. Moreover, Europe is expected to contribute largely to Gaza’s humanitarian aid and, in the long term, its reconstruction through the Union’s financial power, as well as leverage its soft power to help build a fully sovereign Palestinian state (Borrell, 2023; Lovatt, 2025). However, deep divisions among Member States concerning the conflict persist (Connelly, 2025), and investors will unlikely get involved in a Gaza Strip still governed by Hamas (Tramballi, 2025).
Until the very last hour, Israel continued carrying out bombings and strikes against the Gaza Strip, and violence has since increased in the West Bank (Rasheed et al., 2025; Khadder et al., 2025; Parker et al., 2025). The day after taking office, Donald Trump declared he was “not confident” the truce would hold, despite highlighting that Hamas had been strongly weakened by the war on Gaza, together with the entire network of Iranian proxies around the Middle East (Lilieholm & Krever, 2025, para. 1). Moreover, one of his first actions was rescinding the Biden administration’s executive order that authorised imposing sanctions on far-right Israeli settler groups (Trew et al., 2025).
Despite the heavy losses suffered by Hamas and the transformation of the regional geopolitical balance, the agreement reached cannot be regarded as a win for Israel. Its military, one of the most modern, well-equipped and trained in the whole world, has unleashed its destructive power against Gaza, killing more than 46,000 people and displacing roughly two million, but this seemed insufficient even to reach its short-term goals (Gunter & Abualouf, 2025; Tramballi, 2025). Furthermore, Israel has completely failed to offer a credible political project in the long run and, regardless of its military victories, to invest in tomorrow’s security (Tramballi, 2025).
As Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Agnès Callamard stated, Palestinians and Israelis cannot even begin to hope for a brighter future “unless the root causes of this conflict are addressed” (McCready et al., 2025, para. 50). However, none of the parties involved are interested in laying the foundations for longer-term peace and a solution of a wider scope still seems to be far. While including a clear timeline in the agreement has facilitated its approval, the division in different phases implies a party may discard it should the negotiations fail, or the circumstances considerably change. Potentially, this could undermine the efforts to implement further steps and lead to the resumption of hostilities (Lovatt, 2025). Begun with Hamas’ attacks on October 7th, 2023, followed by the Israeli offensive in Gaza, which has left it in ruins and consumed Israeli society, the deadliest chapter in the long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot yet be considered to be over (Shotter et al., 2025).
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