Diplomacy next: The internal politics of Hamas and the power of European engagement

As the Gaza ceasefire comes under growing strain, political engagement with Hamas offers a vital opportunity for the international community to sustain the truce. Although their contacts with the Islamist group will remain mostly indirect, the EU and European states are well positioned to encourage its further political transformation and broader Palestinian political renewal, building the foundations for credible Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Political transformation and diplomacy

Discussions held by the author with senior Hamas members reveal the group is cautiously moving down the diplomatic path, showing pragmatism in accepting Trump’s 20-point plan and openness to future Israeli-Palestinian talks leading to a two-state solution. But it is wary of being cornered like its Hezbollah ally in Lebanon—which has been forced into a ceasefire and disarmament process even as Israel continues its attacks. With Hezbollah’s fate in mind, Hamas wrestled with deep divisions over how to respond to Trump’s plan. Determined to avoid this trap, pragmatists in Hamas’s leadership, like Khalil al-Hayya, Bassem Naim and Ghazi Hammad (all of whom Israel targeted in its September 9th airstrike in Doha), won the internal argument in favour of a positive (though conditional) response. They were able to persuade Hamas’s military leader, Ezz al-Din al-Hadad, to take a calculated risk by accepting the proposal, despite lingering concerns over Israeli commitments and Israel’s lack of clarity on key questions.[1]

In a bid to show the international community positive engagement, Hamas emphasised its acceptance of the ceasefire’s core pillars, including the immediate release of all hostages and its relinquishing of Gaza’s governance to a Palestinian administrative committee, in exchange for a future full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and future reconstruction. In doing so, the Islamist group gave up some of its previous demands, such as the release by Israel of high-profile Palestinian prisoners like Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti and a speedier Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Hamas also deferred thornier political and security questions (such as on disarmament and Trump’s Board of Peace) to future negotiations with Israel. It argues that these are national issues that require a Palestinian consensus.

Comments since then by a senior Hamas member, Mohammed Nazzal, appearing to reject disarmament and setting a five-year limit on maintaining the ceasefire have been misread as the group shifting back towards a hardline stance. In fact, this position is in keeping with Hamas’s longstanding public position that it will only fully disarm once there is a final Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and its own security is assured. In private, however, its negotiators continue to show openness to decommissioning the group’s “offensive weapons” in Gaza in a Northern Ireland-like process if Israel fully implements the ceasefire deal.[2]  

Likewise, the five-year timeframe should be seen as the floor rather than the ceiling for a rolling ceasefire and reflects a proposal first made by Hamas in 2008. Hamas leaders have suggested a Gaza ceasefire could be extended to the West Bank in exchange for the freezing of Israeli settlement expansion, an end to settler violence and the launch of peace talks towards a two-state solution (which Hamas accepted as a national consensus formula in 2017).[3]

But it would be wrong to interpret these signals either as a capitulation to Israeli demands or as Hamas’s imminent transformation into an exclusively political group. In this regard it is no different to other Palestinian groups such as President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, which also retains an armed wing. Any concessions that Hamas makes are a means of testing whether moderation on its part can yield diplomatic progress.[4] If it does, the group’s slow ideological shift could continue incrementally. But if met with maximalist demands like full disarmament or exclusion from Palestinian politics, internal moderates will be weakened, and Hamas will revert to hardline positions that favour a return to armed violence, including trying to further ignite the West Bank.[5]

Hamas’s control on the ground

Having survived Israel’s unprecedented onslaught with most of its militants intact, Hamas believes it retains key leverage as the dominant Palestinian group and the control it exerts on the ground.[6] It is now quickly reasserting security and governance control over the 42 per cent of Gaza currently outside of Israeli control. As happened during the January 2025 ceasefire, municipalities are clearing roads and rubble and restoring limited services like water and sanitation. Hamas militants and Gaza’s civil police are also deploying to fight rising crime and secure aid distribution—aiming at the same time to restore public trust in the movement.[7]

Alongside Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other factions, under the newly formed amn al-muqawama (Resistance security), Hamas launched a security crackdown that has included several public executions. Its first aim is to disarm Gaza’s clans, like the Dughmush, which Israel sought to strengthen during the war as a counterweight to Hamas.[8] Its second aim is to dismantle and eliminate the Israeli-backed militias of Yasser Abu Shabab, Ashraf al-Mansi and Husam al-Astal. These have now taken refuge in depopulated areas controlled by the IDF—raising the possibility that Israel may use them to form an alternative administration or fuel a destabilising insurgency against Hamas.

Israel has spun Hamas’s action against its proxies as a violation of the ceasefire agreement. And, though Trump initially dismissed it as a legitimate effort “to prevent big crime”, America is now also threatening military intervention unless Hamas stands down. Hamas denies targeting civilians and has halted its public executions under Egyptian pressure. But tensions remain with the US, which is increasingly worried that prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is looking for opportunities to collapse the deal and blame Hamas now that all living hostages have been freed.

Current negotiations and Europeans’ role

Averting a return to war and sustaining the current momentum behind the deal will require international mediators to press Israel to fulfil the second phase of the Trump plan and further move its military to Gaza’s border zone. Achieving this will require the deployment of an International Stabilisation Force together with the formation of a new Palestinian police force. Italy and others are ready to participate. A UN Security Council resolution is being drafted. However, operationalising this will require the consent of both Israel and Hamas given the veto that they both retain on the ground. While Hamas is open to such security arrangements, it has made clear that it will not accept any security force that threatens it by detaining its leaders, spying on it or attempting to disarm it by force.[9] Europeans will therefore need to ensure that the mandate of the ISF is acceptable to all sides to allow the mission to operate freely and unthreatened.

In parallel to this, a new Palestinian-led administrative committee for Gaza urgently needs to be formed. While Hamas is ready to hand over governance, issues remain to be resolved, including the membership of the committee (which will need to be acceptable to the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Israel), its relationship with the international Board of Peace and the fate of Gaza’s current 35,000 civil servants (including civil police). Most civil servants have already been vetted and cleared by Israel as part of previous ceasefire deals. They will need to be merged into a new governance structure or retired with financial compensation. Otherwise, a de-Baathification-like purge would create a destabilising vacuum and the emergence of new spoilers.

Progress also hinges on the success of internal Palestinian talks which are currently ongoing in Cairo. This would be a critical step to strengthening the PA and reunifying Gaza and the West Bank. By virtue of its status as the main funder collectively of the PA, Europe is well placed to pressure Abbas to reach an understanding with Hamas that would empower a Palestinian-led administration to govern Gaza and pave the way for national elections within a year. Hamas has signalled it will not obstruct elections.[10] And while it would likely field candidates in legislative elections, it has said it would not sit in government. If Europeans want a stable, inclusive and representative Palestinian leadership, they must act now to make this happen.

A moment of pragmatism

Europeans must abandon any hope of removing Hamas by force or dictate. This has not only proven impossible but would also drive Gaza back into warfare. A smarter, patient approach is needed to build a Palestinian consensus around the Trump plan’s principles while also fending off Israeli attempts to provoke a casus belli. This is ultimately the best way to translate Hamas’s current pragmatism into concrete political and ideological shifts. Together with Arab states, Europe must show Trump that this is the most viable way to implement his deal.

The question is not whether Hamas will change overnight, but whether diplomacy can evolve fast enough to meet Hamas at its most flexible before it returns to the logic of perpetual war. The stakes are larger than a ceasefire or the Trump plan. At play is whether a war-fatigued but resilient movement can be drawn into a sustainable process of reintegration and moderation, or if this opening is once again closed by maximalist and unattainable demands. Europeans can provide the extra weight that tips the scales either way.

If this moment is not met with equally serious diplomatic efforts from Europe and its partners to support the goals described above, it would not only mean a return to what is increasingly recognised as genocide in Gaza but would also shift the internal balance back towards those in Hamas who want to keep fighting. Israel will be no closer to destroying Hamas and will risk further conflagration in an already volatile West Bank where the PA is struggling, and Israeli violence and settlement expansion are surging—conditions Hamas hardliners could exploit.

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[1] Author discussions with senior Hamas members, Istanbul, October 2025 and virtual interview with senior Hamas leader, Doha, October 2025.

[2] Author discussions with senior Hamas member, Istanbul, October 2025.

[3] Author discussions with Hamas leaders, Istanbul and Doha, February, September and October 2025.

[4] Author discussions with senior Hamas members, Istanbul, October 2025.

[5] Author discussions with senior Hamas members, Istanbul, October 2025.

[6] Author discussions with Hamas leaders, from the political bureau and negotiating team, Doha, February 2025

[7] Author discussions with senior Hamas members, Istanbul, October 2025

[8] Author discussions with former Palestinian Authority minister currently involved in coordinating the entry of aid to Gaza, Barcelona, October 2024.

[9] Author discussions with senior Hamas officials, from the political bureau and negotiating team, Doha, August 2024.

[10] Author discussions with Hamas leaders in Istanbul and Doha between December 2024 and October 2025.