For the first time in fourteen months, the bombings should stop in Gaza. At least for a few days. So many months of impossible negotiations ended up leading – in part thanks to the threats of a triumphant Donald Trump before his return to the White House – to Israel and Hamas agreeing on the principle of a truce in the Palestinian enclave. The Gazans, at least 46,500 of whom have died since the start of the conflict, will finally be able to find some respite in the middle of an enclave reduced to a state of ruins. “We have a hostage deal in the Middle East. They will be released shortly,” immediately reacted the American president-elect, Donald Trump, on Truth Social.
Since his election on November 6, the vengeful billionaire has continued to repeat that if the Israeli hostages, held since October 7, were not released before his inauguration, “the gates of hell will open throughout the Middle East”. Cornered, decapitated of its main leaders and greatly weakened by the bombings and ground operations of the IDF, Hamas found itself forced to agree to an agreement, without necessarily obtaining the guarantee of the eventual departure of Israeli troops from Gaza, which was however presented until now as a red line. With his threat, Donald Trump also managed to get around the wall that his predecessor Joe Biden continued to come up against: the intransigence of Benjamin Netanyahu – even if the agreement reached was strongly driven by the administration Democrat.
The question of after
The Israeli Prime Minister will be able to boast, to the families of hostages who have been demanding an agreement for months, of having succeeded by force in freeing some of the 97 people still held in Gaza according to a count by CheckNews – and 34 of whom are officially considered dead. Things accelerated during the night of Sunday January 12 to Monday January 13, with “a breakthrough” in the negotiations, according to an official close to the discussions who allowed Qatar to send a final resolution text to the two belligerents.
This is not yet known, but the most likely scenario, on which mediators and negotiators have been working for months, is that of an initial period of six weeks of ceasefire to allow the release of 33 hostages – women and children as a priority – against a thousand Palestinian prisoners. An Israeli official spoke of a resumption of negotiations on the “16th day” of the first phase to define the next, which should allow the release of the rest of the captives, living and dead. According to the HaaretzIsrael agrees to withdraw from the Netzarim corridor, which cuts the enclave in two, to allow Gazans to move from the south to the north of the territory.
-During the first truce, which lasted only one week in November 2023, around a hundred hostages were released. Those who return to Israel in the coming days will have spent infinitely more time in the tunnels of the Islamist organization and their various captors. It remains to define the future of a largely destroyed enclave, with nearly 2 million inhabitants exiled on their own lands. The question of territorial governance will also quickly arise. While in Israel, the Prime Minister will still have to deal with pressure from the far right, which brought him to power. The same one which, through the voice of the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, still categorically refused in the last days of negotiations a “surrender agreement which would include the release of hyperterrorists, the end of the war, and the loss of what was acquired at the cost of much bloodshed and the abandonment of a large number of hostages”.
Still, for the first time since October 7 and thanks to the ceasefire obtained in Lebanon at the end of November, no fighting should agitate this troubled region which already has nothing to do with what it was before. the day before the Hamas terrorist attack, on this disastrous day in 2023.
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