Israeli and Hamas negotiators are grappling with a new ceasefire proposal aimed at halting the fighting in Gaza as of June 2025. The United States–brokered plan calls for a 60-day truce with staged exchanges of the roughly 58 remaining Israeli captives (including returning the bodies of those deceased) in Gaza for about 1,236 Palestinian prisoners, alongside a significant surge of humanitarian aid into the enclave. Israel’s government has approved the proposal, driven by pressure to bring home hostages, but Hamas’s leadership has given a lukewarm response. Hamas insists in a statement that the deal offers “no guarantees” to actually end the war, noting it lacks a commitment to a permanent ceasefire or full Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza.
History Repeats In Gaza: Can the Latest Ceasefire Talks Pave the Way Forward?
Caught between U.S. pressure and escalating civilian deaths, the latest ceasefire proposal lays bare the fragility of diplomacy in a war shaped by mutual distrust, shifting red lines, and a long history of broken promises.
The group did agree in principle to release 10 living Israeli hostages and 18 bodies in a first phase exchange, but it submitted a list of amendments seeking a “complete withdrawal” of Israeli forces and a lasting truce, conditions not included in the current U.S. draft. Mediators from Washington have rejected Hamas’s added demands as “totally unacceptable”, urging the group to accept the framework already endorsed by Israel. Despite the public war of words, behind-the-scenes talks are ongoing in Qatar and Egypt, with U.S. envoy Steven “Steve” Witkoff shuttling between parties in hopes of finalising a ceasefire deal in the coming days.
Both sides face high stakes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under intense domestic pressure from the families of hostages, signalled willingness for a temporary pause but maintains that Israel reserves the right to resume military operations until Hamas is disarmed and ousted from power in Gaza. Hamas, for its part, is in perhaps its most precarious position since the war began: Gaza’s 2.2 million residents are enduring “the worst conditions in their history,” and Hamas is squeezed between popular desperation for a respite and its refusal to surrender without a guarantee of ending Israel’s onslaught.
The current position seems to be a stalemate. Hamas will not accept a partial deal that falls short of a permanent ceasefire (something it rebuffed in March), yet it also cannot afford to reject the U.S. offer outright as Israeli forces threaten a renewed ground offensive that Hamas is now too weakened to repel. This delicate impasse sets the stage for the latest ceasefire attempt, even as Israeli air strikes and ground raids continue at a lower intensity, underscoring the urgent need, and profound difficulty, of reaching a durable truce.
Timeline of Israel-Hamas Ceasefires Since October 2023
November 2023 First Hostage Truce: After seven weeks of ferocious fighting following Hamas’s October 7 surprise attack, the first pause in the war came via a Qatar-mediated truce in late November. Under that week-long deal (initially four days, extended to seven), Hamas released 110 Israeli hostages, roughly half of the captives taken on Oct. 7, mostly women and children. In exchange, Israel freed over 240 Palestinian prisoners, all women and minors.
The ceasefire also allowed a limited flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza for the first time since the war began. Qatar, Egypt, and the United States played key roles in brokering the pause, which was seen as a humanitarian breathing space and a chance to secure the hostages’ release. However, Israeli leaders stressed it was only a “temporary” halt in combat. Indeed, on December 1, 2023, immediately after the agreed pause ended, Israel resumed full military operations in Gaza, stating that its war against Hamas would continue until the group’s defeat. The week-long truce, while brief, succeeded in its narrow aims (freeing hostages in exchange for prisoners) but did not alter the broader trajectory of the conflict; heavy fighting and airstrikes picked back up, and civilian suffering in Gaza continued.
May 2024 Failed Ceasefire Negotiations: As the war ground on into its eighth month, international mediators redoubled efforts to stop the bloodshed. In early May 2024, talks hosted in Cairo and Doha appeared to yield a breakthrough: on May 6, Hamas leaders announced they had accepted a ceasefire proposal involving a phased hostage-prisoner exchange and an Israeli pullout from Gaza. Celebrations even erupted in Gaza’s streets when news of a possible truce emerged. But the apparent deal collapsed within hours. Israel’s government quickly clarified it had not agreed to the terms Hamas touted, which reportedly included Hamas freeing 33 Israeli captives in stages in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and a full Israeli withdrawal over 42 days.
Soon after disavowing the draft agreement, Israel escalated its offensive instead, launching a major assault on the Rafah area of southern Gaza. Later that month, U.S. President Joe Biden said Israel had tentatively “agreed to an ‘enduring ceasefire’ proposal”, only for Prime Minister Netanyahu to back away and “carry on the war”. The May 2024 episode – essentially a false start- underscored the deep mistrust and internal divisions plaguing truce efforts at the time. It would be several more months (and thousands more casualties) before the warring parties seriously revisited a comprehensive ceasefire deal.
January-March 2025 Multi-Phase Ceasefire and Breakdown: After 15 months of conflict, Israel and Hamas finally reached a broad ceasefire agreement in mid-January 2025, raising hopes of an end to the war. Mediated intensively by the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt, the deal was formally approved by Israel’s cabinet on January 15, 2025, despite opposition from hardliners. It outlined a three-phase truce roadmap: over an initial six-week Phase 1, Hamas would gradually release dozens of hostages (women, children and the elderly first) while Israel freed roughly 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, pulled its troops back to Gaza’s periphery, and dramatically increased humanitarian aid access. In Phase 2, the sides agreed, all remaining Israeli captives,primarily men and soldiers,would be released as Israel fully withdrew its forces from the enclave. Phase 3 would then begin reconstruction of war-shattered Gaza and return the bodies of those killed, leading to a permanent cessation of hostilities.
The ceasefire officially took effect on January 19, 2025, after a brief delay to resolve last-minute disputes over the first hostage list. For roughly two months, major combat halted. Hamas did start freeing captives,24 hostages in the first month,while Israel released over 1,000 Palestinian detainees and allowed more than 10,000 truckloads of aid into Gaza, alleviating dire conditions for a time. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians cautiously returned to what remained of their neighbourhoods under the ceasefire’s assurances.
Despite these hopeful signs, the truce was fragile from the outset. Both sides soon accused the other of bad faith. Hamas charged that Israel violated the deal’s terms by sporadically shelling and by obstructing certain aid shipments and the return of some displaced residents. Israel, meanwhile, said that Hamas was slow-walking hostage releases and retaining key captives beyond the agreed schedule.
Tensions spiked in mid-February, when Hamas briefly halted the handover of prisoners in protest at Israeli actions, prompting Israel (and its U.S. allies) to threaten to end the ceasefire if Hamas didn’t comply. By early March 2025, negotiations over beginning Phase 2 had hit a deadlock: the initial 42-day truce period lapsed on March 1 without a new agreement for extending the ceasefire or resolving the core demands each side sought in the next stage. Israel pressed to prolong the pause contingent on Hamas freeing more hostages, while Hamas insisted Israel first commit to the original plan of a full withdrawal and comprehensive ceasefire.
With talks at an impasse, Israel moved unilaterally to tighten the screws – cutting off the trickle of aid that had been entering Gaza as a pressure tactic. The truce finally collapsed on March 18, 2025, when Israel launched extensive airstrikes across Gaza, citing what it called Hamas’s “repeated refusal” to release all remaining hostages and alleged rearmament during the lull. In a barrage reminiscent of earlier phases of the war, Israeli strikes that week killed hundreds in Gaza and shattered nearly two months of ceasefire. Hamas angrily declared that Israel had “overturned the ceasefire agreement,” but by then, the guns were fully firing again on both sides. The January truce – the most ambitious peace effort of the war – ultimately unravelled amid mutual recriminations, returning the conflict to full intensity by the spring of 2025.
Each successive ceasefire deal in this war has grown more complex – yet none has definitively resolved the underlying conflict. The November 2023 pause was deliberately limited in scope: a short-term, tactical exchange of hostages for prisoners with no political concessions from either side. There were minimal enforcement mechanisms beyond mediator oversight, and indeed, Israel made clear from the start that it would resume fighting as soon as the truce expired.
In contrast, the January 2025 accord was a far more comprehensive blueprint that implicitly acknowledged neither side could achieve total victory. Its phased approach built in reciprocal steps – releases and withdrawals – aimed at building trust over time. The deal also had more formal monitoring: Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. were designated to jointly observe implementation and mediate any violations, and the United Nations was poised to assist with humanitarian logistics.
Despite that, the absence of any neutral peacekeeping force on the ground meant the truce still hinged on goodwill. As seen in March, once disagreements emerged over Phase 2, there was nothing to physically prevent Israel from resuming its offensive or Hamas from rearming in secret.
Under pressure from Washington and faced with mounting civilian casualties, the latest ceasefire proposal has exposed the limits of what diplomacy can achieve in a war defined by entrenched positions and eroding trust. Both Israel and Hamas are constrained militarily, politically, and diplomatically. Yet neither side appears willing to concede enough to make the current talks viable.
While negotiations continue, in Gaza, the violence has slowed but not stopped. With no enforcement mechanisms and no agreement on core demands, the ceasefire risks becoming another temporary fix to a long-term crisis. As with previous deals, the price of failure is not measured in diplomatic setbacks, but in lives lost.