After 15 months of war, a truce is concluded in the Gaza Strip

Israel and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages, ending 15 months of a war that left tens of thousands dead in the Palestinian territory, announced a source close to the discussions.

Indirect negotiations which had stalled for months had accelerated in recent days with a view to a truce associated with the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip since the bloody Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.

This attack triggered an Israeli offensive in response which reduced a large part of the territory to rubble and caused a major humanitarian crisis.

At the announcement of the ceasefire, thousands of Palestinians rejoiced across the Gaza Strip, almost all of whose 2.4 million inhabitants fled their homes in an attempt to escape the fighting and violence. bombings.

Release of hostages and Palestinians

The agreement fiercely negotiated by international mediators – Qatar, United States and Egypt – and concluded a few days before Donald Trump’s return to the White House, provides for an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

An agreement on a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages was reached following the meeting of the Qatari prime minister with Hamas negotiators and, separately, with Israeli negotiators, in his officeannounced a source close to the discussions.

In a first phase, 33 hostages should be released in exchange for a thousand Palestinians detained by Israel, according to two sources close to the negotiations. The hostages would be released in groups, starting with children and women.

The second phase will concern the release of the last hostages, soldiers and men of conscript ageas well as the return of the bodies of the dead hostages, according to the Times of Israel.

However, an Israeli official warned on Tuesday that Israel would not leave no Gaza until all the hostages are returned, the living and the dead.

A deadly conflict

As negotiations progressed, Israel increased deadly strikes on the Gaza Strip, claiming to target Hamas fighters.

On Wednesday, 27 people were still killed, according to emergency services, notably in Deir el-Balah, in the center of the territory, and in Gaza, in the north, where a strike hit a school sheltering displaced people.

In Deir el-Balah, displaced Nadia Madi prayed thata truce be declared.

I’m ready to rebuild my life amidst the rubbleassured this woman who fled her home like almost all of the 2.4 million inhabitants of the besieged territory, and has not seen her family again for over a year.

Only one week-long truce was observed at the end of November 2023 and the negotiations carried out since then have been met with intransigence from both camps.

But talks have intensified ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency of the United States, Israel’s main ally, on January 20, amid increased international pressure on the various parties.

Donald Trump recently promised hell to the region if the hostages were not released before his return.

Of 251 people kidnapped on October 7, 2023, 94 are still held hostage in Gaza, 34 of whom are dead according to the Israeli army.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to a count by Agence France-Presse based on official Israeli data.

At least 46,707 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in the Gaza Strip, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the United Nations.

According to the army, 408 soldiers were killed in combat.

A long reconstruction

Already undermined before the war by an Israeli blockade imposed since 2007, poverty and unemployment, the Gaza Strip emerged from the war plunged into chaos.

The United Nations has estimated that the reconstruction of the territory, more than half of which has been destroyed, would take up to 15 years and cost more than 75 billion Canadian dollars.

Infrastructure, particularly the water distribution network, was heavily damaged.

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Famine, cold, and despair surround the makeshift installations where the population is sheltering en masse. Most children have been out of school for more than a year. Only a handful of hospitals are still partially functioning.

If it silences the guns, the ceasefire leaves in suspense the political future of the territory where Hamas, now very weakened, seized power in 2007, ousting the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas .

The war in Gaza has revived the idea of ​​a two-state solution, Israeli and Palestinian, to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, defended by a large part of the international community, but to which Israel is firmly opposed.

Israel, which had promised to destroy Hamas after the attack on October 7, 2023, says it refuses a total withdrawal of its army, and refuses that Gaza be administered in the future by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinians, for their part, say that the future of Gaza belongs to them and that they will not tolerate any foreign interference.

Outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken proposed on Tuesday sending an international security force to Gaza and placing the territory under UN responsibility.

He said the Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative authority in the occupied West Bank, should regain control of the territory.