Israel’s Cabinet voted Saturday to approve a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release agreement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said, ending days of uncertainty over whether the cease-fire will take effect this weekend. Went. The ceasefire starting Sunday will halt fighting and bombardment in Gaza’s deadliest war yet.
It would also enable the release of hostages held in the region since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
“The government has approved the hostage return plan,” Netanyahu’s office said Saturday morning after the cabinet vote.
The Justice Ministry published a list of 95 Palestinians to be freed as of Sunday, “subject to government approval.” These include 69 women, 16 men and 10 minors.
Dozens of people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire deal was announced, with the army saying on Thursday it had hit about 50 targets in Gaza in the past 24 hours.
The ceasefire is to take effect on the eve of the inauguration of Donald Trump, who took credit for working with outgoing US President Joe Biden’s team to seal the deal. It was first approved by Israel’s security cabinet, with Netanyahu’s office saying it “supports achieving the war objectives”.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian Authority had completed preparations “to assume full responsibility in Gaza” after the war.
Even before the ceasefire began, displaced Gazans were preparing to return home.
“I will go to kiss my land,” said Nasr al-Gharabali, who fled his home in Gaza City for a camp in the south. “If I die on my land, it will be better than living here as a displaced person.”
There was joy but also anger in Israel regarding the remaining people taken hostage in the Hamas attack.
Kfir Bibas, whose second birthday falls on Saturday, is the youngest hostage.
Hamas said in November 2023 that Kfir, his four-year-old brother Ariel and their mother Shiri had been killed in an airstrike, but the Israeli military has yet to confirm their deaths, leading many to hold out hope.
“I think about them, these two little redheads, and I shudder,” said Osnat Niska, 70, whose grandson attended nursery with the Bibas brothers.
‘confident’
Two far-right ministers had voiced opposition to the deal, one of whom threatened to quit the cabinet, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said before the vote that he believed the ceasefire would go ahead.
“I have full confidence and I have full hope that the implementation, as we said, will start on Sunday,” he said.
Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency said Israel bombed several neighborhoods in the territory since the deal was announced on Wednesday, killing more than 100 people and wounding hundreds of others.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Azzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned that the Israeli strikes were endangering the hostages’ lives and could turn their “freedom… into a tragedy”.
The October 7, 2023 attack on Israel killed 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Of the 251 taken hostage, 94 are still in Gaza, of whom 34 have been killed according to the Israeli military.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has destroyed much of Gaza, killing 46,876 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that are considered reliable by the United Nations.
Trump and Biden
The ceasefire agreement followed months of fruitless negotiations and intense efforts by mediators Qatar, the United States and Egypt.
During the days of negotiations, Trump’s envoy to the region Steve Witkoff joined Biden’s pointman Brett McGurk in an unusual pairing to hammer out the deal, US officials said.
“If we had not been involved … the deal would never have happened,” Trump said in an interview Thursday.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani announced the deal on Wednesday, saying 33 hostages would be released as part of an initial 42-day ceasefire.
On Friday, he said: “We want full implementation of the first phase, and the second phase will be the final one.
“We look forward to the Security Council issuing a binding resolution to implement the agreement.”
Israeli officials believe 33 survive, but Hamas has not yet confirmed this.
Also in the first phase, Israeli forces would withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza and allow displaced Palestinians to return “to their homes,” the Qatari prime minister said.
Three Israeli female soldiers will be the first to be freed on Sunday evening, two sources close to Hamas told AFP.
Women may, in fact, be citizens, as the group refers to all Israelis of military age who have completed mandatory military service as soldiers.
An Israeli military official said reception points had been set up in Kerem Shalom, Erez and Reim, where hostages would be attended by doctors and mental health specialists before being transported “via helicopter or vehicle” to hospitals in Israel.
“Israel is expected to release the first group of Palestinian prisoners, including several highly sentenced prisoners,” a source said on condition of anonymity.
Egyptian state-linked media reported that during talks on Friday, negotiators agreed to create a joint operations room in Cairo to “ensure effective coordination” and compliance with ceasefire terms.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the hostages to be freed in the first phase also included French-Israeli citizens Ofer Calderon and Ohad Yahalomi.
Biden said the second phase could bring a “permanent end to the war.”
In aid-starved Gaza, where almost all of its 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once, humanitarian workers are worried about the huge task ahead.
“Everything is destroyed, children are on the streets, you can’t just tell a priority,” Amande Bezzerole, coordinator of Doctors Without Borders, told AFP.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
