Israel’s cabinet will convene on Thursday morning to endorse a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release agreement.
A large majority is expected, despite the opposition of two far-right parties in prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
The ceasefire will come into effect at 10.15am Irish time on Sunday. The deal was reached on Wednesday night after days of talks in the Qatari capital Doha, involving Qatari, Egyptian and American mediation.
Celebrations erupted across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after the ceasefire was confirmed. Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced during the brutal, 15-month war. They will now be able to return home over the coming weeks but many, particularly those who fled from northern Gaza, will discover that their homes have been destroyed or are no longer inhabitable.
However, Israel intensified strikes on Gaza hours after the ceasefire and hostage-release deal was announced, residents and authorities in the Palestinian enclave have said, with dozens of people killed.
Israel’s president Yitzhak Herzog welcomed the ceasefire but warned that difficult days lie ahead.
“Let there be no illusions. This deal will bring with it deeply painful, challenging, and harrowing moments,” he said. “Our nation has an open, bleeding wound that cannot heal until all our sisters and brothers return to their homeland.”
Right-wing protesters blocked the entrance to Jerusalem on Wednesday night and Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionist party, condemned the ceasefire as a “dangerous deal that undermines many of Israel’s achievements in the war”.
US president Joe Biden, in a statement welcoming the breakthrough, described the talks as one of the toughest negotiations he has experienced.
“This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much needed-humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity,” he said.
The ceasefire will begin one day before US president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony. The sides met the deadline Mr Trump set after repeated warnings from him that there would be “all hell to pay” if the Gaza war was not over before he assumed office.
Three female hostages will be set free on Sunday – the first of the 98 captives, some of whom have died, held by Hamas for more than 460 days. Another 30 will be set free over the following six weeks in the first part of the deal, as Israeli troops begin to withdraw from population centres across the coastal Strip.
More than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners will be freed by Israel according to the ratio of 30 Palestinian prisoners for each civilian hostage and 50 for each female soldier. Most will return to their homes in the West Bank and Gaza while some, who participated in attacks in which Israelis were killed, will be sent into exile.
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Negotiations for the second phase of the agreement, during which the remaining 65 hostages will be released and all the Israeli troops will withdraw from Gaza, will start after two weeks. Mr Biden stressed that the ceasefire will continue as long as the sides are talking, even if there are difficulties in agreeing to the details for phase two.
He said in phase three, a reconstruction plan for Gaza will begin, humanitarian aid will increase and the final remains of hostages will also be returned to their families.
In Israel, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum expressed concern that the second stage will not be implemented and, as a result, some of the hostages will remain in Hamas captivity.
“We will stand by the families until the very last hostage is brought home,” it said in a statement.
Israeli troops invaded Gaza after Hamas-led gunmen burst into Israeli border-area communities on October 7th, 2023, killing 1,200 soldiers and civilians and abducting more than 250 foreign and Israeli hostages.
Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza has since killed more than 46,000 people, according to Gaza health ministry figures, with hundreds of thousands of displaced people struggling through the winter cold in tents and makeshift shelters.
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