How Hamas was Forced to Accept a Deal it Didn't Want

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SHARM EL SHEIKH—When Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya first saw President Trump’s plan for peace in Gaza, which demanded that his group disarm with few concrete steps to ensure Israel would end the war, his immediate reaction was no.

The plan, heavily amended by Israel and presented to Hamas by the Qatari prime minister and Egypt’s spy chief, looked nothing like what Hayya had been led to expect, officials familiar with the discussions said. Hayya, who less than a month earlier had been a target of Israel’s audacious attack on Hamas in Qatar, told his visitors the group would keep its Israeli hostages until it had enforceable guarantees the war would end.

But two days later, Hamas came back to Arab mediators with a yes. The deal hadn’t changed. The pressure on Hamas had.

Egypt and Qatar told Hayya the deal was his last chance to end the war, according to the officials. They pressed Hamas to understand that holding the hostages was becoming a strategic liability, giving Israel a source of legitimacy to keep fighting.

The next day, joined by Turkey, they warned him that if Hamas didn’t approve the plan it would be stripped of all political and diplomatic cover; Qatar and Turkey would no longer host the group’s political leadership, and Egypt would stop pressing for Hamas to have a say in Gaza’s postwar governance, the officials said.

It was enough to get Hamas to agree to release all its hostages in Gaza and sign on to the first part of Trump’s peace deal, giving up what had been its most important bargaining chip to keep a seat at the table. While modifying its acceptance with heavy caveats that reflected its concerns about the deal, Hamas had given Trump an opportunity to declare victory and set the stage for a hostage release early this week.

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Qatar and Egypt didn’t reply to requests for comment. Asked about being pressured into a deal, Khaled Al-Qaddoumi, Hamas’s representative in Tehran, said the group had endorsed Trump’s proposal because it guaranteed Palestinians wouldn’t be forced out of Gaza and paved the way for humanitarian aid and reconstruction. Qaddoumi said the group is now counting on Trump to ensure Israel doesn’t go back to fighting.

The campaign that forced Hamas to accept a deal it didn’t want was the result of weeks of effort by the Trump team to bring Middle East powers including Egypt, Qatar and Turkey together in a coordinated push to get Hamas to agree to sign up.

Critics have long wanted Arab mediators to do more to pressure Hamas into ending the war. But this time, conditions were ripe.

“I think everybody just wanted to be done with this,” said Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and top diplomat in Israel.

Better relations with Turkey and the Gulf gave Trump leverage among countries with ties to Hamas. Meanwhile, the Gulf states had become alarmed that the war could endanger their own security after the Israeli airstrike against Hamas in Qatar.

Hamas also was under growing pressure at home—short on funds, barely able to keep up a guerrilla war against Israeli forces that have seized much of Gaza, and facing a Palestinian public that has suffered hunger and ruin and just wanted the war to be over.

Once Trump got Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly agree to end the war, Hamas was cornered as the lone holdout.

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Though many aspects of the current deal have been on the table for the past year or more, the balance of power in the Middle East has shifted significantly, creating the conditions for a breakthrough.

Military and intelligence campaigns against Lebanon and Iran left the Arab world increasingly wary of Israel’s growing power and willingness to use it. The strike on Qatar, a U.S. ally that also hosts a major American military base, underscored the risk that the war could pierce the Gulf’s security bubble and destabilize even the wealthiest and most influential countries in the region, sharpening Arab nations’ opposition to the war.

Trump also began courting Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been sidelined by President Joe Biden after years of diplomatic tension with Washington. Trump, who has a warmer relationship with Erdogan, afforded the Turkish leader his first White House meeting in more than half a decade in September. Erdogan also sat at the head of the table at a meeting of leaders from Muslim-majority countries at the United Nations where they discussed ways to resolve the war in Gaza.

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In reality, though, Hayya and Hamas were running out of time as regional powers closed ranks. Before the meetings wrapped up on the first day, the mediators delivered a warning to Hamas: Put your faith in Trump’s plan or face endless war. You have five days to decide.

Before that deadline, with debates over key issues including the exact line of withdrawal for Israeli forces in Gaza and the list of Palestinian prisoners to be released still unresolved, Hamas formally agreed to the hostage release.

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