As negotiators argue over maps and timelines, one of the most sensitive tests of Gaza’s US-brokered ceasefire is unfolding out of sight, deep under Rafah.
Israeli and foreign officials estimate that around 100 to 200 Hamas terrorists are holed up in a tunnel network on the Israeli-controlled side of the so-called “Yellow Line” in southern Gaza, unable to move back into Hamas-run territory without surfacing into areas patrolled by the Israel Defense Forces. For Washington, what happens to those men is more than a tactical problem; for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, it has become a political red line.
At stake is not only the fate of a few hundred fighters but the credibility of a broader ceasefire architecture that is supposed to end large-scale fighting in Gaza and gradually strip Hamas of its weapons, even as violence spirals in the West Bank.
From an American perspective, the Rafah tunnel is a stress test for the entire Gaza framework: Can Hamas terrorists be disarmed and removed in a way that doesn’t blow up the ceasefire?
“It’s a balancing act for the United States,” Joe Truzman, senior research analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Long War Journal, told The Media Line. “In part, it is about protecting the ceasefire, but it is also about keeping happy Qatar and Turkey, who are Hamas allies as well as key guarantors of the deal. I expect Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, and perhaps the United States to ramp up pressure on the Jewish state the longer time passes without an agreement being made, making it more difficult for the Israelis to act against the trapped gunmen,” he added.
US sees itself as the central figure of the ceasefire
Washington has cast itself as the central broker of the ceasefire, with US officials shuttling between Jerusalem, Doha, Ankara, and Cairo to lock in the next phases of President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan: dismantling Hamas’s military-terror infrastructure, bringing in a stabilization force, and reshaping Gaza’s governance.
“The United States is the primary actor negotiating the ceasefire. This role requires it to balance the needs of all parties involved,” Truzman said. “The issue of the Hamas fighters will be resolved, and that decision should be based on what is most effective at ensuring the success of the deal,” he added.
Israel’s starting point is different. For Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute, Israel sees Hamas trying to reopen a deal that is already on paper.
“Israel is trying to postpone the issue of the 200 terrorists until Hamas fully complies with the agreement and releases the four bodies of the dead hostages. Only then will Israel be willing and ready to negotiate what to do with these 200 terrorists,” Michael told The Media Line.
“Hamas is trying to insert a new deal into an existing deal, and this is something Israel must reject, and I think the Americans understand that. The Americans are pushing to preserve the ceasefire and avoid a crisis or an excuse for Hamas, but I don’t think Israel will be ready to deal with this issue until Hamas has completed the transfer of all the dead hostages,” he added.
Under the US-mediated ceasefire that took effect in October, Hamas has begun returning long-held remains, including those of Lt. Hadar Goldin, killed in Rafah in 2014 and buried this month after 11 years in Gaza. But several bodies of hostages taken during Hamas’ 2023 massacre are still missing, and Israeli officials say Hamas has tried to link further returns to concessions over the trapped fighters.
“This is what Hamas is obligated to do under the agreement,” Michael said, “and I don’t think we should tolerate all the manipulation and stalling that Hamas is using to buy time, rebuild itself and create new facts on the ground,” he added.
Beyond the legal and humanitarian arguments, the case's geography raises hard security questions for Israel.
“I’m not fully familiar with all the details about these terrorists, and there may be factors we don’t know yet,” Michael acknowledged. “But for example: How is it that these 200 terrorists remained in an area under IDF control? Hamas knew the IDF was going to redeploy along the Yellow Line, and it knew exactly that the tunnel we are talking about is in a zone controlled by the IDF. So why weren’t these terrorists evacuated in advance?” he noted.
“That suggests that Hamas intended to use these terrorists to attack the IDF from within an area under Israeli control,” he continued. “I assume Israel has very good intelligence on this, and in the end, Israel will reach an understanding with the Americans about their fate. In any case, I don’t believe they will be released with their weapons, and I’m not sure they will be released into Hamas-controlled territory, I mean the western side of the Gaza Strip,” he added.
Those suspicions intersect with a flurry of proposals by mediators. Officials in the United States, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey have floated several options: safe passage deeper into Hamas-run Gaza in exchange for disarmament; supervised surrender in an IDF-controlled corridor; or exile to third countries if a state can be found to receive them.
Michael sees some version of expulsion as the most plausible endpoint, but only once the hostage-remains file is addressed.
“I think it is more likely that they will be expelled from the Gaza Strip to a third country, perhaps Turkey, Qatar, or even Egypt as a temporary stop on the way to another country, maybe Algeria, I don’t know,” he said.
“It would represent a major compromise by the Americans in their stance toward Hamas, after President Trump declared that Hamas must be dismantled in one way or another. So in the end I believe a solution will be found, but not before, at least I hope not before, Hamas transfers to Israel the four bodies of the hostages,” he noted.
If Michael’s focus is on sequencing and leverage, Truzman’s is on the deeper structural issue: disarmament.
“The current ceasefire is vulnerable to unraveling. But the biggest problem is not the trapped Hamas fighters, it’s the issue of disarmament. There is still no concrete answer to this obstacle,” he said. “Everything Hamas has said and done points toward it not complying with disarmament. If the Israelis knew that Hamas was going to comply with disarmament, they would let the fighters leave,” he added.
Under the US plan, as described by American and Israeli officials, Gaza is supposed to move through a sequence: a halt in large-scale operations and a hostage-prisoner exchange; dismantling tunnels and rocket infrastructure; deployment of a stabilization force; and the emergence of new governing arrangements that exclude Hamas from formal rule while trying to keep its remnants demobilized.
On the ground, implementation has been uneven. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry says tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since the war began in October 2023, and hundreds more have died in Israeli strikes and clashes since the October ceasefire amid mutual accusations of violations. Israeli officials, for their part, say Hamas has continued to maintain clandestine command networks and weapons stocks in breach of the deal.
“There is a possibility that Hamas and intermediaries may use the trapped fighters as a pretext to walk away from the deal,” Truzman cautioned. “However, I have doubts that they would do so, since it would risk being blamed by the Trump administration for undermining the agreement, a consequence that Hamas and the intermediaries are likely keen to avoid,” he added.
While the world’s attention is fixed on Gaza, the West Bank is experiencing its most violent settler season on record, a trend diplomats warn could destabilize the Gaza ceasefire from the outside in.
UN figures show that Israeli settlers carried out a record number of attacks against Palestinians in October, many of them during the olive harvest. In dozens of villages near Nablus, Hebron, and the central West Bank, Palestinian farmers have reported beatings, arson, and the destruction of thousands of trees.
For Palestinian officials and many international observers, this makes the Gaza ceasefire look increasingly compartmentalized: relative de-escalation in one territory, escalating pressure in another. Israeli security officials, meanwhile, fear that Hamas and other armed groups could exploit any breakdown over Rafah to fan further unrest in the West Bank, turning settler violence and army raids into another front in the conflict.
Back in Rafah, mediators are still searching for a formula that would see the tunnel fighters disarm and leave without exposing Israel to accusations of backing down to Hamas and without triggering a public rupture with Washington.
Michael believes both governments have strong incentives to avoid an open clash.
“They will not allow an explosion or a clash between them, at least not a public one,” he argued, “because that would weaken Israel’s position and I think it would weaken America’s position as well,” he added.
Truzman sees the tunnel standoff and the West Bank surge as symptoms of the same underlying problem: a ceasefire that pauses large-scale warfare without resolving the struggle over arms, territory, and power.
For now, the truce in Gaza formally holds, even as localized clashes, airstrikes, and humanitarian crises continue. Whether it survives may depend less on what happens in one tunnel complex than on whether Trump’s disarmament architecture can be made credible, and whether the violence rolling across the West Bank’s hills is brought under control before it drags the conflict into a new phase.