After several days of diplomatic efforts, Israel and Hamas have accepted an agreement for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages, Qatar confirmed on Wednesday January 15
“An agreement has been reached” between Israel and Hamas “for a ceasefire” in Gaza as well as“an exchange of hostages and prisoners”announced Mohammed ben Abdelrahmane Al-Thani, the Prime Minister of Qatar, one of the mediator countries.
The agreement will come into force this Sunday, January 19, according to him. “The first phase will last 42 days and will include a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the east, away from populated areas. » he said during a press conference in Doha. “ Israeli forces will then be positioned along the Gaza border, allowing for the exchange of prisoners, as well as the exchange of bodies and the return of displaced people to their residences. According to him, 33 Israeli hostages will be released during this truce.
Negotiations, supervised by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, resumed in January in Doha. The exchanges took place on two levels, according to information from the BBC: on the one hand between Hamas and the Israelis, whose delegations did not negotiate directly but went through intermediaries, and on the other hand between Qatar and the United States.
Sources close to the ongoing discussions indicated on Wednesday afternoon that Hamas and its ally the Islamist Jihad had approved the truce agreement.
Questions still “to be resolved”
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for its part, declared that certain issues remained “to be resolved” in the ceasefire agreement with Hamas, but that it hoped to conclude “overnight”.
The Israeli press release states that “Faced with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s firm stance, Hamas gave in at the last minute to his demand to modify the deployment of (Israeli) forces along the Philadelphia corridor”buffer zone inside the Gaza Strip along the border with Egypt.
The question of whether or not it was controlled by the Israeli army was one of the sticking points in the negotiations.
