9 September – 14 October 2025 BESA: BEGIN SADAT CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES BAR ILAN UNIVERSITY VEDI ANCHE:
https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/213-2.9.2025-Edited.pdf
The most important event is the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was hammered out with US mediation. A few days later, on 13 October 2025, Hamas returned all 20 living hostages it was still holding and the bodies of four dead hostages. According to the agreement, it was supposed to return all 28 dead hostages, not just four. Following the release of the 20 living hostages, Israel released approximately 1,950 Palestinian terrorists it had captured in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria. This leaves approximately 5,500 terrorists in Israeli jails. It also returned the bodies of 45 killed Palestinian terrorists. More will be returned at a rate of 15 Palestinian bodies to every Israeli body returned.
The agreement, termed the Trump 20-point plan, contains a number of phases:
The first phase involves the release of the last Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, both living and dead, in return for the release of terrorists and the withdrawal of Israeli forces to a line that still leaves slightly more than half the Gaza Strip in IDF hands, but enables free travel throughout the areas it does not control (Israeli ground operations had cut off Khan Yunis and Gaza City from the rest of the Strip).
The second phase involves setting up an interim, non-Hamas, technocratic Palestinian government (overseen by an international ‘board’) and security forces that will replace Hamas as the administrative body of the Gaza Strip to manage the rebuilding of the Strip and the disarmament of Hamas. This will enable Israel to gradually withdraw from most of the territory it still controls to a perimeter approximately 1 to 2 kilometers in depth inside Gaza along its border with Israel. There is no time frame in the agreement for this phase; it is to be determined in ongoing negotiations and as the process continues of setting up the replacement administration and disarming Hamas. Hamas personnel who wish to do so will be allowed to leave the Gaza Strip.
In the third phase, the security perimeter will remain in Israeli hands for an undetermined period of time.
The points in the second phase were all refused by Hamas in all the previous rounds of negotiation. This raises two questions:
Why did they suddenly agree to these demands?
Why did they agree to release all the living hostages in one go instead of dragging out their release, as they had demanded in all previous rounds of negotiations?
In answer to the second question, a senior Hamas official claimed that the group no longer needed the hostages because it had received other guarantees, but he did not specify what those guarantees are.
Hamas has not provided an answer to the first question. However, the reasons can be assessed as follows:
The increasing Israeli military pressure on Hamas was beginning to affect its ability to function. Its casualties were mounting and it was finding it increasingly difficult to replace them. It was also in the process of losing the northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City.
On 15 September, the IDF reported that senior Hamas leaders in Gaza had requested safe passage for them and their families to leave Gaza. Some were allowed to leave and some were refused, depending on their position in Hamas.
Over the past month since the last update, from 9 September to 10 October, Israeli ground forces reached the sea in the Netzarim Corridor (1 October), cutting all of northern Gaza off from the rest of the Strip. The IDF then gradually captured the territory of Gaza City, taking about two-thirds of it by 10 October. Three Israeli combined arms divisions were employed in this offensive. They faced the equivalent in combat strength of one combined Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad infantry “division”, though it was not organized as such and was less well equipped than a typical infantry division. Furthermore, given their need to replace casualties with hastily trained new recruits, their forces were less tactically competent.
The Israeli offensive began with over 1,000 airstrikes aimed at Hamas positions ensconced in buildings – first, high-rise buildings with surveillance positions on the higher floors and combat positions on the lower floors; then, lower multi-storey buildings with combat positions and weapons caches above ground and tunnel entrances in the cellars. The strikes were conducted over several days and each was preceded by warnings to the civilians who might still be in the area to evacuate. In addition to airstrikes, several Hamas positions were hit with ground emplaced bombs carried to them by remote-controlled M113 Armored Personnel Carriers. These were directed to the targets, unloaded their bombs, and were then directed back. On 16 September, Israeli troops began to advance slowly through the built-up areas to comb the buildings, find tunnel entrances and destroy them. The main threats were explosive booby traps and remote-controlled bombs, terrorists firing from buildings through windows or gaps, and occasional raids by terrorists on Israeli troops resting between actions.
Fighting in southern Gaza continued as mopping-up operations rather than an Israeli offensive.
Israeli casualties in this period numbered nine killed and several dozen wounded. Hamas casualties were not reported in detail, but from anecdotal information they can be estimated at a few hundred.
On 4 October, Trump threatened Hamas that if it did not accept his plan, he would agree to Israel escalating its offensive across Gaza.
Internal pressure by the Gazan population against Hamas was growing, especially as its ability to assert its dominance was slipping.
The increasing alternative supplies of food were weakening Hamas’s ability to control the population as it no longer controlled “the faucet”. In an attempt to regain control, they attacked some of those alternatives. On 20 September, Hamas fired on a team of UN workers preparing a separate road for supply truck movement and stole their vehicles. On 3 October, they fired rockets at one of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund’s food distribution sites.
The re-evacuation of almost 1 million people from northern Gaza back to central and southern Gaza after they had returned there last January increased the hostility of the population towards Hamas.
A poll conducted by a Palestinian polling firm found that only about one-third of the population still supported Hamas policies. This was expressed in both civil disobedience (the raiding of food supplies on trucks coming into Gaza and at storehouses inside Gaza) and increasing incidences of local tribal militias turning their weapons on Hamas itself. They were responding to Hamas personnel who had beat or shot their members by conducting retaliation raids and killing Hamas personnel. Some tribes even declared that they were willing to maintain a ceasefire in their areas with Israel.
The Israeli airstrike on the Hamas leadership in Qatar (9 September), though it failed to kill its targets as they had left the residence shortly before the strike, signaled a clear message both to them and to the Qatari leadership, who have supported Hamas for decades, that Israel’s patience is wearing thin and it is now willing to break “accepted rules”.
The attack was declared to be a direct response to a Hamas-instigated attack on a civilian bus in Jerusalem by a number of Hamas members from Samaria, which killed six Israeli civilians and wounded more. It was also, however, timed to coincide with a number of articles published in Israel stating that the Hamas leadership in Qatar, especially Khalil al-Khaya (formerly Sinwar’s deputy in Gaza and currently the official head of Hamas in Gaza, though located outside it), was refusing the agreement, whereas the Hamas leadership remaining in Gaza (after the senior members had been decimated by Israel) was more flexible.
Both Qatar and Egypt, the other main Arab mediator, were worried that this act signaled a willingness by Israel to escalate its war with Hamas beyond the borders of Gaza. They accordingly applied increased pressure on Hamas to surrender.
On 10 October, following Hamas’s official agreement to the Trump plan (after first saying no, then waffling between yes and no, and finally saying “Yes, but…”), Israeli forces ceased offensive operations and withdrew to the agreed line for the first phase.
The new deployment of the IDF in Gaza after withdrawing to the first phase line
On 13 October, all 20 living Israeli hostages were returned. They are now undergoing hospital treatment to recover from the wounds, ailments and starvation they suffered during their two years of captivity. However, in contravention of the agreement, only four of the 28 dead were returned. Israel returned the bodies of 45 Hamas terrorists of the several hundred it holds (there is no official number). Most of these terrorists were from 7 October 2023.
On 14 October, a group of terrorists attempted to approach an Israeli position. They ignored both verbal warnings and warning shots, upon which they were fired upon. Hamas claims five were killed.
Meanwhile, Hamas has exploited the ceasefire to concentrate forces to attack rebellious tribes in areas outside Israeli control. They cannot attack the tribes that agreed to a ceasefire with Israel because these are mostly behind Israel’s current front lines. Reports in Gazan social media state that many dozens of people have been killed in these battles between Hamas and the tribes. On Hamas’s side, this includes the son of a senior Hamas official and one of Hamas’s leading propaganda bloggers. Hamas has also conducted a number of public executions of captured members of what it terms “criminal gangs” and “traitors who support Israel“. These are tribal members captured in the abovementioned skirmishes. For each public execution, Hamas brought in onlookers to cheer them on. In addition to the public executions, there are unverified reports of massacres conducted inside the neighborhoods of the tribes by Hamas terrorist forces.
This all begs the question of whether Hamas has any intention of following through with the second phase of Trump’s plan and handing over administrative control over Gaza as well as its weapons, or is merely trying to exploit the ceasefire to recover its authority and strength. If the latter, it is banking on the US and internal Israeli resistance to prevent Israel from renewing its offensive. Statements by Hamas leaders over the past few days, Hamas’s failure to return the bodies it was supposed to return, the attempt by Hamas operatives to approach Israeli forces, and the group’s attacks on rebellious tribes all suggest that Hamas has no intention of keeping its side of the agreement.
The Israeli government is now considering the option of halting several actions it was supposed to conduct once the living and dead hostages had been returned. Those options include not opening the Rafah crossing with Egypt and reducing the number of supply trucks entering Gaza from the 600 per day dictated in the agreement to the 300 per day that were entering prior to the agreement.
Hamas claims the aggregate number of Gazans killed since the beginning of the war in October 2023 is approximately 67,682 (approximately 3,000 more since the last update) and more than 170,000 wounded (approximately 8,000 more since the last update). It claims these are not the final numbers as some people are buried under rubble and in tunnels (obviously not civilians). Hamas numbers, which have been parroted by the United Nations throughout the war as if credible, have NEVER been credible, but since late May 2025 and Hamas’s repeated invention of massacres that did not occur and fake famine victims, their credibility has dropped even lower.
At sea, a convoy of ships manned by pro-Hamas activists (most of whom were Arabs, Turks and Muslims from the Far East) launched from Europe and North Africa and sailed toward Gaza to “break the siege”. The convoy purported to consist of approximately 70 ships of varying sizes, from small yachts to small fishing trawler equivalents. The first wave of approximately 40 ships, carrying approximately 400 activists, reached about 200 kilometers from the Gaza/Israel coast on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (1 October). They were intercepted by the Israeli Navy, captured, and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The activists claimed they were carrying humanitarian supplies for the population of Gaza. In fact, on all the ships put together, there were fewer than two tons of such supplies. This is less than one-tenth the amount carried by a single truck of the approximately 300 that were entering Gaza from Israel every day.
After being expelled from Israel over the following few days, some of the activists appeared on television broadcasts claiming to have been physically abused and tortured by Israeli soldiers. These were, in short, the usual false claims.
A second wave of nine ships approached the area on 8 October. They too were intercepted by the Israeli Navy, with 150 more activists taken to port in Israel.