How historic Gaza deal was sealed with 10 minutes to spare

 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2pp3y68w5o

But sources familiar with the discussions agreed the dynamics of the talks shifted decisively in mid-December and the pace changed.

Hamas, already reeling from Israel's killing of its leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza two months earlier, had become increasingly isolated. Its Lebanon-based ally Hezbollah had been decimated and had agreed to a truce with Israel. Bashar al-Assad's Iran-backed government in Syria had also been swept away.

The view in Washington is that Hamas was forced to abandon the idea that "the cavalry was coming to save it", as one US official put it.

"It is hard to overstate how fundamentally the equation changed and what that [did] for Hamas's calculus," says a senior Biden administration official familiar with the talks.