“Will Hamas be as accomodating and return the hostages they took from Israel?”
People in the West like to call it Hamas, meaning we view it as a hierarchical organization with a leader. There may be an org chart. There might be someone who is called the leader. But Hamas is a word meaning a crowd-sourced organization that has some overarching funding and supply apparatus. The guy called the leader can say this or that, but he generally can’t force anyone to do what he says. At most he can choose to supply someone or fund someone, but they don’t consider him a leader unless it’s to their temporary advantage. Given this, it’s really not possible for someone in the Hamas apparatus to force anyone to give up their hostages. The West doesn’t want to grasp this because it means letting even one Palestinian into their country as they are wont to do, means they are importing a crowd sourced terrorist or a terrorist supporter.
Does this mean that when a halt is called to negotitate [whatever] with “Hamas,” that Israel is only in negotiations with whomever rules a particular neighborhood and that whatever agreement is reached only extends into that chief’s little fief?
true
It means that there is no command structure to enforce adherence to any peace agreement. The only solution would be complete extermination.