The Israeli government must give the green light on Thursday to the agreement announced by Qatar and the United States on a ceasefire in Gaza. This after more than 15 months of a war between Israel and Hamas which left tens of thousands dead.
After more than a year of blockage, indirect negotiations in Doha accelerated as Joe Biden left the White House, replaced Monday by Donald Trump. They led Wednesday evening to the formalization of a three-phase agreement providing for a truce from Sunday, the release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for a thousand Palestinian prisoners, and an increase in humanitarian aid.
The news was welcomed by many capitals and international organizations. And thousands of Palestinians exulted across the besieged and war-devastated Gaza Strip sparked by an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Palestinian Islamist movement saw in the agreement the fruit of the “tenacity” of the Palestinian people and their “valiant resistance”. The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, also hailed Thursday a “victory” for the Palestinians and a “defeat” for Israel.
“Good choice”
But the Israeli government itself has not confirmed the agreement, and the Gaza Strip Civil Defense reported seven deaths in two Israeli strikes Thursday morning in Gaza City, and 20 deaths the previous evening, after the ‘announcement. The “final details” are still being finalized, according to a statement released overnight by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, he thanked Donald Trump and Joe Biden, whose teams worked closely to reach an agreement on “the release of the hostages”.
A meeting of the Israeli Council of Ministers is expected during the day of Thursday to examine the agreement and, barring any surprises, validate it, with the head of government having a majority, despite disagreements. If Israeli President Isaac Herzog welcomed a “good choice”, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, of the far right, denounced a “dangerous” agreement and specified that his party’s ministers would vote against.
Reconstruction
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data. Of 251 people kidnapped on the day of the attack, 94 are still being held in Gaza, of whom 34 are dead according to the army.
At least 46,707 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in the Gaza Strip which also caused a humanitarian disaster, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health deemed reliable by the UN.
-The main elements of the agreement were made public by the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdelrahmane Al-Thani, whose country is one of the mediators between Israel and Hamas, and Joe Biden. It provides for entry into force on Sunday for a first phase of six weeks including a ceasefire, the release of 33 hostages and an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas.
Political future on hold
The second phase should also allow the release of the last hostages and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Mr. Biden further detailed. The third and final phase must be devoted to the reconstruction of Gaza and the restitution of the bodies of hostages killed during their captivity.
“A monitoring mechanism to monitor the implementation of the agreement will be set up in Cairo and will be managed by Egypt, Qatar and the United States,” said the Prime Minister of Qatar. Joe Biden assured that the agreement would result, from its first phase, in a “complete and total” ceasefire.
Humanitarian aid must increase during the first phase, which must allow negotiations to reach the second phase, namely “a definitive end to the war”, he added. Already undermined by an Israeli blockade imposed since 2007, poverty and unemployment, the besieged Gaza Strip has been ravaged by war and the vast majority of its 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced and live in particularly harsh conditions. .
“I can’t believe that this nightmare that has lasted for more than a year is starting to come to an end,” Randa Samih, a displaced person from Gaza City in the Nousseirat camp, told AFP. “We lost so many people, we lost everything,” added the 45-year-old Palestinian, while spontaneous gatherings of joy took place in several places including in front of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el- Balah, where so many deaths have flowed since the start of the war.
In Israel, Ornit Barak, 59, present at a rally in Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening to demand the end of the war and the return of all the hostages, said she was “very happy, but also worried” while waiting for the return of all the hostages, 94 of whom are still captive, including 34 declared dead by the army. If it silences the guns, the ceasefire leaves in suspense the political future of the territory where Hamas, now very weakened, took power in 2007.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
Related News :