In exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel, the government of Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day ceasefire on Wednesday. This would also permit the entry of humanitarian supplies into the besieged enclave and the release of 50 prisoners held in Gaza.
For days, representatives of the US, Israel, Hamas, and Qatar, which has been mediating the negotiations in secret, have claimed that a solution was close to being reached.
More than 200 people are reportedly in the hands of Hamas after its forces invaded Israel on October 7.
According to a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there will be a four-day period during which 50 women and children would be released and fighting will cease.
It said that the break would be prolonged by one day for every ten more detainees released, but it made no mention of the release of Palestinian inmates in return.
“The government of Israel is determined to release all of the captives. After hours of closed-door deliberation, the statement was released: “Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal.”
In return for 150 Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli jails, Hamas promised to release the 50 captives. The Palestinian group stated in a statement that the truce agreement will also permit hundreds of trucks carrying fuel, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
It further stated that Israel had promised not to launch an attack or detain anyone in any area of Gaza during the truce.
The agreement was praised by US President Joe Biden. “Today’s deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released,” he said in a press release.
The release “of a number of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons” will be reciprocated, according to the Qatari administration, with the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages from Gaza.
It said in a statement that the start time of the truce would be disclosed within the following 24 hours.
According to Gazan authorities, the agreement marks the first cease-fire in a battle that has seen devastating Israeli shelling level large portions of the Gaza Strip, kill 13,300 civilians in the small, densely populated territory, and leave around two-thirds of the 2.3 million residents homeless.
Netanyahu asserted that Israel’s overarching goal remained unaltered.
“We are at war, and we won’t stop fighting until we accomplish all of our objectives. In an audio message played at the beginning of the government meeting, he stated his goals: “to destroy Hamas, return all our hostages, and make sure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel.”
According to Hamas, “As we announce the striking of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will remain on the look out to defend our people and defeat the occupation.”
According to a senior US official, three Americans—among them a three-year-old girl—are anticipated to be among the hostages freed.
According to Israel’s authorities, more over half of the captives were not Israeli citizens and had dual or foreign citizenship from about 40 nations, including the US, Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain, and Portugal.
According to Israeli media, the first hostage release is scheduled for this Thursday. According to sources, the agreement’s implementation would be delayed for a whole day in order to allow Israeli citizens to petition the Supreme Court to prevent the release of Palestinian detainees.
“And then I’ll know that it’s really over and I can breathe a sigh of relief and say that’s it, it’s over,” she continued.
Approximately 85 women and 350 juveniles were among the more than 7,800 Palestinians held captive by Israel, according to Qadura Fares, head of the Commission for Prisoners’ Affairs of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, who spoke with Reuters. According to him, the majority of those detained had not been charged with anything and had just been involved in non-violent acts like throwing rocks at Israeli forces.
The International Committee of the Red Cross will be working inside Gaza to facilitate the release of the hostages, according to Reuters, who was informed by Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, the Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry and senior negotiator for Qatar in the ceasefire talks.
According to him, there would be “no attack whatsoever” because of the truce. Nothing in terms of military maneuvers or growth.”
Qatar expects that the accord “will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease-fire,” Al-Khulaifi continued. And that is our goal.
So far, Hamas has only freed four hostages: on October 20, US citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie Raanan were freed under the pretext of “humanitarian reasons,” and on October 23, two Israeli ladies, Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, were freed.
Islamic Jihad, the military wing of the Palestinian resistance group that took part in the raid on October 7 with Hamas, announced late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it had been holding since the strikes on October 7 had passed away.
Al Quds Brigades posted on its Telegram channel, “We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death.”
The ground warfare continued as attention was drawn to the hostage release agreement. The Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City was ordered to be evacuated by the Israeli force, according to Mounir Al-Barsh, director general of Gaza’s health ministry. He said that Israel asserted that fighters were operating out of the facility and that they would take action against them in four hours.
Additionally, Israel declared on Tuesday that its forces had surrounded the Jabalia refugee camp, which is a crowded urban expansion of Gaza City and the site of Hamas’s resistance against Israeli armoured forces on the advance.
An Israeli airstrike on a section of Jabalia resulted in 33 fatalities and numerous injuries, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
According to the media, an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the city of Khan Younis resulted in 10 fatalities and 22 injuries in southern Gaza.
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