Reports surfaced Monday that the terrorist group Hamas has accepted a temporary ceasefire proposal with Israel that it had initially rejected last month, which Israel is currently evaluating. Experts say Hamas’s move is likely a survival tactic rather than a good-faith gesture of peace.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the deal is a modified version of one proposed by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff (dubbed the Witkoff proposal), which calls for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza “and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 10 living hostages,” along with immediate talks between Hamas and the Jewish state for a long-term ceasefire. Hamas’s agreement to the deal reportedly came about “after a round of tense talks over the weekend in Cairo between Palestinian factions and Egyptian and Qatari officials.”

In response, Israeli officials said that they are weighing the proposal and would respond by the end of the week. Previously, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said that the only deal his country would accept would be one requiring Hamas to release all the remaining hostages, permanently end hostilities, and relinquish all arms and control over Gaza. But Israel’s willingness to consider the modified Witkoff proposal is likely a sign of how desperately it wants the release of at least some of the hostages.

It is believed that 20 out of the remaining 50 hostages are still alive, and video evidence of severely emaciated captives like Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski indicates that time may be running short for Israel to reach a deal if they hope to secure the hostages’ release before their death. The remaining hostages have been held for 682 days.

Meanwhile, Hamas is also under pressure to reach a deal. According to a former Israeli intelligence official, the primary reason Hamas accepted the Witkoff proposal is “because Egypt and Qatar are really putting pressure on them, because Egypt really doesn’t want the Israeli operation in Gaza City to happen and is trying to prevent it.” Earlier this month, Israel’s security cabinet approved a proposal by Netanyahu for the nation’s military forces to occupy Gaza City, which remains Hamas’s last remaining stronghold.

Middle East experts like Dr. A.J. Nolte, who serves as director of the Institute for Israel Studies at Regent University, say that Hamas’s acceptance of the Witkoff proposal is almost certainly a desperate move to buy more time.

“I think the main thing to keep in mind is always, what are Hamas’s core interests?” he explained during “Washington Watch” Monday. “[O]ne of their imperatives is always to try to cause as much pain for Israel as possible and to bring the fight to Israel, but ultimately to do that, they have to survive. And so, what Netanyahu is basically threatening to do here is to go into a part of Gaza that they’ve never been into before, but it’s also a part of Gaza that Hamas controls absolutely, which is Gaza City. And so Hamas is interested, at a minimum, in delaying that as much as possible. … They may be making the calculation that if they let some of the hostages out, they can then … extract a delay out of Israel, which will at least buy them some more time to survive.”

Nolte went on to contend that even if Hamas is agreeing to a hostage deal in bad faith, it will likely give Israel leverage to justify a full-scale invasion of Gaza to a skeptical public.

“The question is, how many hostages can Israel get back, and will they be able to then say the trade is worth it?” he pointed out. “There’s a reasonable possibility the answer to that is, yes, they will be able to get at least some of the hostages back in exchange for some sort of delay. So yes, it’s a stalling tactic [and] it’s a survival tactic, but the Israelis might look at it and say, ‘Right now we have none of them coming back. If we play the [game], we may get some.’”

Nolte continued, “The other reason is if, in fact, it turns out that Hamas is not acting in good faith, then the Israelis can still come back to their own people and to the world and say, ‘Look, we really have tried everything. We’ve tried with these people over and over and over again, and now we really have no other choice.’ I think if there’s a serious offer on the table, the Israelis will consider it, even if they know Hamas is going to break the deal because they can get something back in exchange — they can get some of the hostages back.”