Jerusalem and Washington have defined the coming days as especially important for the continuation of the ceasefire and the transition to the next stage of the Trump plan. An Israeli diplomatic source said attention should be paid to the Qatari Prime Minister's remarks in New York, where he repeated his country's commitment to bringing Hamas to surrender its weapons.
According to the source, Qatar and the US presented the sharp Israeli responses to the two incidents in recent days, in which IDF soldiers were killed, as a warning to Hamas that if it is not willing to give up its weapons, no one will prevent Israel from continuing the attacks. The source rejected the criticism from the right regarding the scale of the responses and said that dozens of dead Hamas commanders, including commanders at various levels of the organization, are the greatest means of pressure on the terror organization.
It appears that in the weeks before the ceasefire, Hamas members were particularly afraid of these types of attacks, in which family members of senior Hamas officials – those involved in terror or uninvolved – are also killed. It is possible that these attacks led to appeals from senior officials in the organization to the negotiation managers to bring about a ceasefire.
Hamas claimed that the perpetrators of the attacks against IDF soldiers were not subject to their authority and not in contact with the headquarters. Israel presented the Americans with information contradicting Hamas' claims and accused the organization of carrying out deliberate attacks to accelerate the IDF's withdrawal from the Strip.
An Israeli source said, "Hamas has a perception that it is possible to make the soldiers' lives miserable, to cause casualties, and thus create pressure on the government to speed up the withdrawal, as happened in the Disengagement and in Lebanon. With that, it will not take responsibility and will claim it is adhering to the ceasefire." In contacts with Hamas, the organization was required by the mediators to impose authority on the terrorists carrying out the attacks and to stop the delays in handing over the deceased hostages' bodies.
The Qatari PM said, "The situation in Rafah is disappointing; it is clear to us that Hamas is ready to give up rule in Gaza." Israel has conditioned the continuation of negotiations on the second stage upon the completion of the handover of hostage bodies, and the assessment is that pressure from the mediators and the Americans, as well as Israel's attacks, will lead to the handover of at least eight more bodies in the coming days.
