People stand next to flags on the day the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, are handed over under the terms of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The differences between Hamas and Israel can be seen not only in how they fight, but also in how they cease fighting.

More specifically, the terms of the ceasefire agreement, the first stage of which is now ending, are very revealing. All of the possible explanations cast a very negative light on Hamas — and thereby on its supporters.

Hamas was soundly battered during the war that began with its October 7th massacre in Israel. The other inhabitants of Gaza paid a very heavy price for that attack, which the majority of them supported.

While Israel had profoundly degraded Hamas’ capacity by the time of the January 2025 ceasefire, it had not eliminated Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza. Furthermore, it had only succeeded in freeing, or retrieving the bodies of, a small proportion of the hostages that Hamas and other Islamist factions in Gaza had taken from Israel.

This undecisive outcome, combined with external pressure to reach a ceasefire agreement, explains why neither party was in a position to dictate terms unilaterally. Nevertheless, the terms were remarkably lopsided in favor of the Palestinians.

Given that Hamas and Gazans bore many more fatalities and the overwhelming majority of the infrastructural damage and internal dislocation, Gaza appears to have had a much greater interest in the ceasefire itself, than did Israel.

Israel’s main incentive was the return of hostages taken on October 7. However, the asymmetry of the agreement is manifest in the number of convicted Palestinian criminals and terrorists released compared to the number of innocent Israeli hostages.

In the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, 33 Israelis (or their bodies) were to be released. In exchange, Israel agreed to release between 1,800 and 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were lawfully convicted of crimes including mass murder and terrorism.

What explains such asymmetric terms in favor of the losing side? There are a few possible and overlapping explanations. They all reflect badly on Hamas.

The first possible explanation is that Israeli (and other) hostages in Gaza face much greater threats than do Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The latter are not in a life-threatening situation. They are not liable to execution at any moment. They are not kept on starvation diets, nor housed in unsanitary conditions in humid tunnels without light, or adequate ventilation. They have access to medical care (as Yahya Sinwar, architect of the October 7 attack, himself had when he was an Israeli prisoner).

There have been reports of some Palestinian prisoners being subjected to abuse, but even if those isolated examples did happen, there are important differences. Not least among these is that such abuse is illegal under Israeli law, with disciplinary action being taken at least sometimes. By contrast, abuse is the norm for hostages in Gaza.

However, to the extent that Palestinian prisoners are abused, the asymmetric terms of the agreement suggest a second explanation, namely that Hamas cares less about the welfare of Palestinian prisoners in Israel than Israel cares about hostages in Gaza.

The same is true about the valuing of lives. According to this explanation, Israel values the lives (and even the bodies) of its citizens and residents (of all religions) more than Hamas values the lives of Gazans.

The third possible explanation is that while Israel is a democracy ultimately accountable to an electorate, Hamas, as an authoritarian regime, is not answerable to Gazans. Even if there is some truth to the criticisms that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been unduly influenced by his own interests in weighing up the interests of the hostages relative to the goal of defeating Hamas, he is still inordinately more accountable to Israeli public opinion than Hamas is to Gazan public opinion.

There is nothing surprising in any of these possible explanations. It did not take the October 7 massacre, and the atrocities of that day and the many months since, for us to know that Hamas is indiscriminate in its violence. Instead, these events provided further and more horrifying evidence of what was already known.

We also already knew, from Hamas’s methods of waging war in multiple conflicts with Israel, that it cares very little about Gazan deaths. Indeed, it may attach positive strategic value to those deaths. Similarly, it is — or should be — no surprise that Israel is a democracy, and Hamas a repressive theocratic regime that treats its own citizens viciously.

What is dismaying is how many people, including in Western countries, have failed to draw these conclusions. Despite all the evidence, both in war and in ceasefire, they continue to side with the repressive theocracy of Hamas over the democracy that is desperately defending itself against an enemy that combines a medieval mentality and morality with modern munitions.

David Benatar is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, and currently Visiting Professor at the Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto.