On January 15, the day the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release agreement was announced, outgoing US President Joe Biden predicted it would bring a “permanent end to the war.” He added that the people of Gaza could now “recover and rebuild” and that they could “look to a future without Hamas in power.”

Biden is understandably keen, in the dying days of his presidency, to take credit for the outcome of months of painstaking indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas. But for him to claim this ceasefire deal spells the end of Hamas rule in Gaza, and a final end of the war is to misrepresent its terms and exaggerate its possibilities.

Only the first phase of the complex three-stage agreement between the warring parties is spelled out in any detail. It includes a six-week initial ceasefire and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from urban centers in Gaza. In this first stage, Israeli women, children, and elderly taken hostage by Hamas would be freed in batches in exchange for the release of dozens of Palestinian security prisoners held in Israel.

The text of the agreement lays responsibility on its guarantors – Egypt, Qatar, and the US – to then find a way to continue the negotiations in a “stainable calm” that would achieve a “permanent ceasefire between the parties.” Such a statement does not amount to an agreement, or even a pathway to one. It is merely an aspiration that the war will finally end but with no firm idea as to how this is to be achieved.

The defeat of Hamas would indeed end the war, as President Biden implies. But the movement shows no sign of acknowledging defeat, despite its attack on Israel in October 2023 leading to the decimation of the Hamas army and leadership, deaths of thousands of civilians and the ruination of Gaza. Rather its surviving leadership insists it will fight on.

In a televised speech in which he painted the ceasefire agreement as a victory, senior Hamas leader and top negotiator Khalil al-Hayya insisted that the Hamas attack that started the war would be “a source of pride for our people and our nation” and would be “passed down from generation to generation.”

Since the elimination of Hamas in Gaza was one of Israel’s principal war aims, Hamas argues that its mere survival constitutes victory. And, by not releasing all the hostages in the early stages of the ceasefire agreement, Hamas thinks it can force Israel not only to release more of its members from jail but also prevent it from waging a war to the finish line against Hamas in Gaza, for fear of the remaining hostages being killed.

For Israel however, agreeing to a ceasefire does not mean it has abandoned its goal of degrading Hamas to a point where it would be impossible for it to repeat its October 7 pogrom. That day, which saw Hamas fighters kill whole families, filming and broadcasting their actions, is etched in the minds of still traumatized Israelis as the worst day in the country’s history. But it also led to a fundamental shift in Israeli strategic thinking away from containment of threats posed by its enemies to one of “threat removal.”

This means not being content to deter Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian-backed groups, but to remove from them the capacity to launch any repeated October 7-style attack. In short, the Israeli military has now moved from a defensive to a pre-emptive offensive strategy, as seen in its decimation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and its punishing counterattacks on Iran.

There is therefore no prospect of Israel allowing Hamas to retain the capacity to attack it again from Gaza, notwithstanding the temporary ceasefire agreement. Hamas calculated that the mass demonstrations in Israel calling for priority to be given to releasing the hostages over pursuing the war would force the government to negotiate a permanent ceasefire. But while opinion polls show support for bringing the hostages back home, they also show opposition to allowing Hamas to retain control of Gaza.

There is still widespread political backing for continuing the campaign against Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last October, that the war in Gaza was not over. And opposition leader Benny Gantz also said the war must go on, and that Israeli forces would be operating in Gaza for “years to come.”

With both Hamas and Israel pledged to continue the war, it is hard to see how Biden’s prospect of a peaceful Hamas-free Gaza gained through negotiation is credible. The incoming Trump administration, meanwhile, is showing it is more closely aligned with the Israeli strategy of keeping up military pressure on Hamas in Gaza.

On the same day the ceasefire was announced, President-elect Trump pledged to work closely with Israel and US allies to ensure Gaza would “never again become a terrorist haven.” Trump’s National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, publicly stated that this meant the fight against Hamas would continue.

“Gaza has to be demilitarized. Hamas has to be destroyed to the point that it cannot reconstitute,” he clearly stated.

It is only natural that Gazans should celebrate at least a pause in the bombardment of their towns and cities and that Israelis should welcome the prospect of seeing at least some of their kidnapped civilians returning home. But it is clear that, despite the ceasefire agreement, none of the fundamental problems that triggered war in Gaza have been finally removed and so a resurgence of conflict is all but inevitable.