The United States and its Arab allies have achieved an initial breakthrough by pushing Israel and Hamas to accept a tenuous and delicate ceasefire deal. It also represents a small victory for Hamas, which has been devasted but remains standing as a party in the negotiations, leaving Israel with the grudging prospect of seeing the Hamas militant organization survive in some form in exchange for the bigger and more urgent goal of the release of around 150 Israeli hostages.

The Gaza ceasefire deal reveals sharp divides within Israeli and Palestinian leadership over its outcomes and implications.

The Israeli president tried to address the sharp divide within the Israeli government by issuing a carefully worded statement: “There is no greater moral, human, and Jewish obligation than to bring our children home.” President Isaac Herzog hoped to preempt a possible delay in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet endorsing the agreement.

An equally serious divide exists among Palestinians. Presidential advisor Mahmoud Habbash ridiculed Hamas’s failure to get any substantial concession from Israel except a temporary “suspension” in the war, and said the agreement that Hamas touts as a victory “is not worth the ink it is written with.” Habboush, an advisor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, reflected wider anger among Palestinian critics of Hamas who question the objectives of the militia’s October 7 attack if the result now is to negotiate Israeli soldiers vacating Gaza and a ceasefire, both of which were in place before the war.

In his victory speech, Hamas political leader Khalil Al-Hayya thanked Iran and the Axis of Resistance and praised the Oct. 7 attack. But, more ominously for the Palestinian government, al-Hayya glorified and encouraged allied militant groups in Jenin in the West Bank that are battling Palestinian Security Forces. Palestinian journalist Ayman Khaled decried this as inviting a Palestinian civil war, raising the specter of a repeat of the Palestinian civil war of 2007 when Palestinian Islamist militants seized Gaza in a stunning defeat for moderate Palestinians and Arabs.

Just as in Israel, ceasefire prospects have sharpened the Palestinian divide, reviving the struggle over which Palestinian faction will control Gaza. Palestinian law enforcement has intensified its operations against armed groups in Jenin in the West Bank that are allied with Gaza-based militants. A big development is the strongly-worded statement released by Fatah, the faction that dominates the Palestinian Authority government, which is the biggest political attack against Hamas since Oct. 7.

Hamas faces criticism for devastating losses in Gaza, with over 40,000 Palestinians killed and widespread destruction.

The statement was broadcast by the state-run Palestine TV and the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, titled, Fatah: We will not allow Hamas, which gambled with the interests of our people for Iran’s benefit and caused the destruction of Gaza, to replicate its reckless actions in the West Bank.

Fatah warned that Hamas is deflecting accountability for its actions by accusing opponents of treason. The following quote from the statement gives a good insight into the heated language of internal Palestinian political discord:

“The Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) stated that Hamas, which has aligned itself with Iran and other regional axes, has no right to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people. Hamas has gratuitously provided justifications for the occupation to carry out the largest genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. This has led to the destruction of Gaza, the martyrdom, disappearance, injury, and imprisonment of more than 200,000 children, women, and men, whom Hamas used as human shields instead of protecting them and their homes.

Hamas is also responsible for the catastrophic situation in Gaza … Hamas’s insistence on using the rhetoric of showmanship and accusing opponents of treason, based on fabrications and lies disconnected from reality, aligns openly with the occupation’s plans. Through its attempts to incite security chaos and disorder in the West Bank by explicitly supporting lawless groups, Hamas demonstrates that it remains committed to policies that have brought nothing but disasters, death, and destruction to the Palestinian people.”

Meanwhile, the Palestinian government has informed Egypt it refuses any role for Hamas in a post-war administration in Gaza. While Hamas and groups aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood across the region celebrate the Gaza-based militia’s survival, supporters of Palestinian aspirations everywhere understand that now is the time to start assessing the damage that Hamas has inflicted on the Palestinian cause.

The militia casts itself as a Palestinian liberation group but there is no escaping the fact that Hamas is also part of the history of militant Islamism in the Middle East, sharing the ignominious company with groups like Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, and the Sunni and Shia militant ideologies of Ikhwanism and Khomeinism.

Palestinian government officials reject any future political role for Hamas, citing its ties to Iran and militant ideologies.

The ceasefire in Gaza will allow closer examination of the massive losses in the enclave, but already a consensus of sorts exists among Palestinians and Arabs that Hamas caused the biggest loss in the modern history of Arabs in Palestine, surpassing in scale and impact what is called Nakba or the war of 1948. Official Palestinian accounts set the number of Arabs killed in the 1948 civil war at 15,000 with 1.4 million displaced. That number pales in comparison with the +40,000 figure that Hamas authorities cite in Gaza.

Palestinians realize that a setback has taken place. Ihab Hassan, a Palestinian rights activist from Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, shared a cartoon on his social media account that summarizes Palestinian anger after the ceasefire. The cartoon depicts two Hamas political and military leaders holding a beaten Palestinian man upside down by his legs while raising a victory sign.

Palestinian journalist Khaled Hassan tweeted: “It is absolutely essential for Arab states to stand against the return of Hamas to the political forefront in Gaza, as the return of Hamas signifies the revival of the Muslim Brotherhood’s project to undermine” Arab states.

The October 7 attack will be remembered as a bigger blunder than the ill-advised decision to reject the UN partition resolution of 1948, when Palestinian leaders were misled into rejecting the plan and declaring war, under the influence of a rising tide of Arab nationalist, socialist, and Islamist populist politics. That blunder wasted a historic opportunity to create an Arab state in Palestine that controlled most of historic Palestinian territory with a small and symbolic Jewish state, with the Christians of Palestine accepting citizenship of both states.

On Oct. 7, Hamas bet big on overturning the Arab-Islamic consensus on the two-state solution and peaceful Arab-Palestinian-Israeli coexistence that the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative symbolized and endorsed by both the Arab League and the OIC. Hamas’s vision of conflict resolution was an endless existential religious war that would push Muslims and Jews into a generational biblical war.

While support for a demilitarized Palestinian state partially existed inside Israel before the war among influential liberal segments of Israeli society, October 7 has given reason to hardliners to reject the idea for the foreseeable future both in terms of security concerns and the timing, as such an outcome may seem like a reward and embolden militants.

The October 7 attack by Hamas is seen as a major strategic misstep, undermining Palestinian aspirations for statehood.

However, considering the strong support for a Palestinian state among moderate Arab states, and the potential benefits from normalization that would accrue to Israel from robust ties with Arab and Muslim states, there is reasonable optimism that the region will find a way to move forward in ways acceptable to all parties, including Israel and the Palestinians. The goodwill created by the Abraham Accords within Israeli and Arab politics and business – a huge but less visible aspect of the Accords – might compensate for the serious obstacles that have been created in the face of Palestinian aspirations.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.