After months of negotiations, a ceasefire has paused the devastating war in Gaza, but it risks collapsing as a result of deep distrust between Israel and Hamas and the multi-phased nature of the deal.

Qatar, which mediated the talks along with the United States and Egypt, has expressed hope the six-week truce and hostage-prisoner exchange will become permanent.

However, that outcome is far from certain with the releases timetabled at a glacial pace in comparison to a previous truce agreement.

Further complicating the ceasefire is the fact that the text of the agreement has not been made public, raising risks of last-minute snags and differences in interpretation by the parties.

“Unfortunately, there is a high risk of the truce derailing and (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu continuing his military campaign in Gaza,” Anna Jacobs, of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told AFP.

The ceasefire kicked off to a rocky start, with delays in both the beginning of the truce and the first swap of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners when it went into effect on Sunday.

During a three-hour delay before the truce began, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed eight people and wounded 25.

The ceasefire is being monitored by the mediators via an “operations room” in Cairo, Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari told Al-Jazeera.

He said they are watching to see if the delicate terms of the deal are being implemented -- including the entry of aid into Gaza, the prisoner and hostage exchanges, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from densely populated areas and the return of displaced Gazans to their homes.

But Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group said “success will depend also on the mediators serving as guarantors”.

On Monday, newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump said he was “not sure” the ceasefire would last.

Hiltermann said “this pertains in particular to the US, given its weight. But we all know that Trump is unpredictable and has a very short attention span.”

“Will he seek to see the deal’s implementation through or lose interest?”

He also said the “the absence of a publicly available official text of the terms opens the possibility for widely diverging interpretations”.

The ceasefire covers the cessation of hostilities for an initial six-week phase, during which 33 Israeli hostages are to be freed in exchange for 1,900 Palestinians being held in Israeli custody.

What comes next, however, will be trickier to see through.

The terms of a second phase, aimed at bringing about a permanent end to the war and the return of all the remaining living hostages to Israel, are to be ironed out.

“It is important to stress that the deal is a fragile truce not a cessation of the conflict,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Chatham House think-tank’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, wrote in an opinion piece.