•Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) attends a meeting in the command center of the defense ministry
Israel’s security cabinet approved in a vote today a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal that should take effect this weekend, the prime minister’s office said.
The agreement, which must now go to the full cabinet for a final green light, would halt fighting and bombardment in Gaza’s deadliest-ever war, reports AFP.
It would also launch on Sunday the release of hostages held in the territory since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Under the deal struck by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, the ensuing weeks should also see the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Israeli strikes have killed dozens of people since the deal was announced. Israel’s military said yesterday it had hit about 50 targets across Gaza over the past day.
The full cabinet will convene later today to approve the deal. The ceasefire would take effect on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president.
Saying the proposed deal “supports achieving the objectives of the war”, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the security cabinet recommended that the government approve it.
His office had earlier said the release of hostages would begin on Sunday.
Even before the start of the truce, Gazans displaced by the war to other parts of the territory were preparing to return home.
“I will go to kiss my land,” said Nasr al-Gharabli, who fled his home in Gaza City for a camp further south in the territory.
“If I die on my land, it would be better than being here as a displaced person.”
In Israel, there was joy but also anguish over the 251 hostages taken in the deadliest attack in the country’s history.
Kfir Bibas, whose second birthday falls tomorrow, is the youngest hostage.
Hamas said in November 2023 that Kfir, his four-year-old brother Ariel and their mother Shiri had died in an air strike, but with the Israeli military yet to confirm their deaths, many are clinging to hope.
“I think of them, these two little redheads, and I get shivers,” said 70-year-old Osnat Nyska, whose grandchildren attended nursery with the Bibas brothers.
‘Confident’
Two far-right ministers had voiced opposition to the deal, with one threatening to quit the cabinet, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he believed the ceasefire would go ahead on schedule.
“I am confident, and I fully expect that implementation will begin, as we said, on Sunday,” he said.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israel pounded several areas of the territory, killing more than 100 people and wounding hundreds since the the deal was announced on Wednesday.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned that Israeli strikes were risking the lives of hostages due to be freed under the deal, and could turn their “freedom… into a tragedy”.
The war began with the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to our tally of Israeli official figures.
Of the 251 people taken hostage, 94 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has destroyed much of Gaza, killing 46,788 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Trump and Biden
The ceasefire agreement followed intensified efforts from mediators after months of fruitless negotiations, and with Trump’s team taking credit for working with US President Joe Biden’s administration to seal the deal.
“If we weren’t involved in this deal, the deal would’ve never happened,” Trump said in an interview yesterday.
A senior Biden official said the unlikely pairing had been a decisive factor in reaching the deal.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, announcing the agreement on Wednesday, said an initial 42-day ceasefire would see 33 hostages released, including women, “children, elderly people, as well as civilian ill people and wounded”.
The Israeli authorities assume the 33 are alive, but Hamas has yet to confirm that.
Also in the first phase, Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza’s densely populated areas and allow displaced Palestinians to return “to their residences”, he said.
Two sources close to Hamas told our correspondent three Israeli women soldiers would be the first to be released on Sunday evening.
The women may in fact be civilians, as the militant group refers to all Israelis of military age who have undergone mandatory military service as soldiers.
Once released they would be received by Red Cross staff as well as Egyptian and Qatari teams, one source said on condition of anonymity.
They would then be taken to Egypt where they would undergo medical examinations and then to Israel, the source said.
Israel “is then expected to release the first group of Palestinian prisoners, including several with high sentences”, the source added.
Egypt was today hosting technical talks on the implementation of the truce, according to state-linked media.
French President Emmanuel Macron said French-Israeli citizens Ofer Kalderon and Ohad Yahalomi were on the list of 33 hostages to be freed in the first phase.
Biden said the second phase could bring a “permanent end to the war”.
In aid-starved Gaza, where nearly all of its 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once, aid workers worry about the monumental task ahead.
“Everything has been destroyed, children are on the streets, you can’t pinpoint just one priority,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) coordinator Amande Bazerolle told our correspondent.
