Beirut, Lebanon – The ceasefire agreed by Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas has brought some optimism that Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza will finally end and Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners will be released.

But there is still uncertainty from some analysts that the deal, announced on Wednesday and due to begin on Sunday, will go ahead as planned.

Israel’s security cabinet greenlit the agreement on Friday evening after postponing a meeting that was initially scheduled for Thursday. Still, the division of the deal into three phases opens up the potential for its terms to be violated or for the parties – particularly Israel – to backtrack on its terms, analysts said.

The deal stipulates that an initial 42-day phase – which is to see a handover of some captives and prisoners, an Israeli retreat from populated areas and an increase in aid – will be followed by additional phases in which more prisoner exchanges will happen as well as a permanent Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a sustainable ceasefire.

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Experts who spoke to Al Jazeera fear that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has resisted a ceasefire for months and insisted that Hamas must be destroyed, will resume hostilities after the captives are recovered to ostensibly “punish” the Palestinian group, buttress Israel’s security and ensure his own political survival while somehow blaming Hamas for the failure of the deal.

“Israel is very good at breaking ceasefires and making it appear that it wasn’t its fault,” said Mairav Zonszein, an expert on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group.

Temporary relief

The Gaza ceasefire was announced by outgoing United States President Joe Biden and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani. US President-elect Donald Trump also announced his backing – and it has been widely reported that it was pressure from Trump, who is set to take power on Monday, that pushed ceasefire negotiations to a deal.

The agreement aims to end a devastating war that has prompted legal scholars, rights groups and United Nations experts to accuse Israel of “genocide” due to its policy of starving Palestinians and destroying services necessary to sustain life. South Africa has also launched a case at the International Criminal Court accusing Israel of genocide, which has been backed by numerous countries.

Israel has killed more than 46,700 people – men, women and children – and uprooted nearly the entire pre-war population of 2.3 million people from their homes through attacks and orders to flee or face bombings and ground attacks.

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The war began after Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,139 people were killed and 250 taken captive.

Many of the captives were released in an earlier ceasefire in November 2023, and those remaining are expected to be released for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, an exchange that could unfold over several weeks.

However, Zonszein believes the deal could collapse after that point.

“This [deal] will provide immediate relief by getting humanitarian aid in and to provide for a release of hostages and prisoners. The [deal] is more of an immediate pause than a long-term solution,” she told Al Jazeera.

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian legal scholar and a former negotiator with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, also fears that the vagueness of the deal may allow Israel to end it at any time.

One term, for instance, requires Israel to retreat back to the “border” of the Gaza Strip as opposed to the 1967 border, which demarcates Israel’s borders from the occupied territory.

This wording, Buttu said, raises concerns over whether Israel will actually withdraw fully from the enclave.

“The agreement is very vague, and there are a lot of places where Israel can – and will – manoeuvre its way out of it,” Buttu told Al Jazeera.

Political fears

The ceasefire agreed upon on Wednesday is roughly the same as an earlier one proposed in May, which was agreed to by Hamas but rejected by Israel, which promptly went on to invade the city of Rafah in southern Gaza.

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At the time, Biden warned Israel that Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians were living, was a “red line” out of fear that an invasion would exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza.  However, the US did not follow through on its threat to punish Israel after its ally sent troops into Rafah.

Israel’s move was part of a broader pattern by Netanyahu to torpedo ceasefire proposals, seemingly to keep his fragile far-right coalition together until he regained enough popularity to run in new elections.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have exploited Netanyahu’s political fears to push their own agenda, such as keeping the war in Gaza going indefinitely, experts said.

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are part of Israel’s religious nationalist settler movement and have threatened to leave the coalition if Netanyahu inked a ceasefire, a move that would potentially collapse the government and trigger elections.

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are again threatening to exit the coalition if the current ceasefire goes ahead. It’s uncertain whether those threats are mere posturing or whether the two are willing to try to bring down Netanyahu.

“Everyone sees Netanyahu as a dominant force in Israeli politics, but it is remarkable how much Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have been able to exploit his political fears to pursue their own agendas,” said Hugh Lovatt, an expert on Israel-Palestine with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

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Netanyahu appears to have regained most of his popularity since the attacks on October 7, 2023, which saw his approval ratings plummet.

However, he still appears wary of moving ahead with the ceasefire for fear of his political survival.

On Thursday, Netanyahu said he was “postponing” a cabinet meeting required to approve the ceasefire and blamed Hamas for backtracking on the terms of the deal. The security cabinet finally approved the deal on Friday.

Mediators have said Hamas has already accepted the proposal, as it has done on several occasions since May.

“The Netanyahu today is not the one of the past. He’s more fearful, and he’s unable to make decisions, which has led to strategic paralysis,” Lovatt said.

The day after?

Since the beginning of the Gaza war, the US has advocated for the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has some control of the occupied West Bank, to return to Gaza to govern.

The PA was born out of the 1993 Oslo I Accord, which was signed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders and kicked off a peace process with the ostensible aim of bringing about a Palestinian state.

For more than two decades, the peace process has been defunct due in large part to Israel expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law, and imposing restrictions that have politically, economically and territorially cut off Gaza from the West Bank, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

The PA is also run mainly by Fatah, a Palestinian party that fought a brief civil war with Hamas in 2007, leading to a division in the Palestinian national movement.

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The war saw the PA in effect kicked out of Gaza and confined to the West Bank, where it has limited authority under Israel’s entrenched occupation.

Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, which Israel then labelled a “hostile” territory and placed it under a land, sea and air blockade.

Any plan to bring the PA back to Gaza worries Israel because it would politically and territorially reconnect the occupied areas and revive calls for Palestinian statehood, according to Omar Rahman, an expert on Israel-Palestine with the Middle East Council for Global Affairs.

“If you have a united Palestinian territory under a united Palestinian leadership, then Israel will be under pressure to participate in a political end game, and Netanyahu doesn’t want that to happen,” he told Al Jazeera.

In addition, experts told Al Jazeera they do not see Israel fully withdrawing from Gaza in a vacuum, mainly due to Israel’s fear that Hamas could reassert control over the enclave and build back its capabilities.

Netanyahu has previously said Israel should have “overall security control” over Gaza for an “indefinite” period of time.

“The sad history of Gaza shows us there is a cycle of escalation and de-escalation because there is no political framework to address root causes,” Lovatt said.

“Those who want to resume fighting in Gaza will likely have an opportunity at some point.”