For the first time in almost fourteen months, the bombings should stop in Gaza. At least for a few days. So many months of impossible negotiations ended up leading this Wednesday, January 15 – 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. An agreement which must still be officially ratified Thursday by the Israeli security cabinet, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, warns of some details which still need to be resolved. “We have a hostage deal in the Middle East. They will be released shortly,” However, the American president-elect immediately reacted on his Truth Social network.
The agreement reached this Wednesday is very similar to the one proposed by Joe Biden on Friday May 31, 2024 and on which mediators and negotiators have been working for months. It provides for an initial period of six weeks of ceasefire to allow the gradual release of 33 hostages – women, children and men over 50 – against a thousand Palestinian prisoners. Israel is said to have committed to freeing 30 Palestinians for every Israeli civilian, and 50 if the hostage is a soldier. This first phase should begin on Sunday, the Qatari Prime Minister said Wednesday evening, specifying that his country, Egypt and the United States would monitor the application of the agreement.
On the 16th day of the truce, a resumption of negotiations should take place to define the next phase, which should allow the release of the rest of the living captives, a permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. A third phase must follow to allow the return to Israel of the remains of the hostages remaining – or taken on October 7 – in Gaza, and to see the start of a reconstruction of the Palestinian enclave under the supervision of Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations .
According to the HaaretzIsrael agrees during this first phase 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. IDF men will be redeployed in a buffer zone approximately one kilometer wide along the border with the Jewish state. Gazans, at least 46,500 of whom have died since the start of the conflict, should finally be able to find some respite in the middle of an enclave reduced to a state of ruins. Several hundred of them expressed their joy at the announcement of the agreement.
This also provides that 600 trucks of humanitarian aid will enter the Palestinian territory every day, half of which will be dedicated to northern Gaza, by far the most affected by the destruction. Around fifty will transport gasoline, essential to running generators and restarting hospitals. According to Egyptian media, talks were underway on Wednesday evening to allow the opening of a crossing on the border between Egypt and Gaza for humanitarian aid.
“Biden and Trump worked together”
Since his election on November 6 and his vengeful return, Donald Trump has continued to repeat that if the Israeli hostages, held since October 7, were not released before his inauguration, “the gates of hell open [aient] throughout the Middle East.. In parallel with public threats, the billionaire also dispatched his envoy for the Middle East to the region, Steve Witkoff, who met last Saturday with the Israeli Prime Minister, but also participated in the negotiations in Qatar, alongside Joe’s representative. Biden, Brett McGurk. “Biden and Trump did what no incumbent and president-elect had ever done. They worked together during the transition period on a huge diplomatic deal, and they got it“, commented Israeli journalist Barak Ravid on Wednesday.
While there is little doubt that Trump’s imminent inauguration played a role in the timing of this agreement, the influence of the future president remains difficult to measure. If some sources have reported a tense interview between Witkoff and Netanyahu, others, mentioned in particular by the Israeli media Ynet, assure that Trump would have promised the Israeli Prime Minister that if he quickly accepted a truce, he would then support a possible resumption of the war in Gaza. In a press release published before any reaction from the White House, Donald Trump unsurprisingly pulled the plug: “This epic agreement could only have come about after our historic victory in November, because it signaled to the world that my administration would pursue peace.” Shortly after, Joe Biden in turn welcomed this ceasefire, attributing it in particular to an American diplomatic campaign “persistent and meticulous”while acknowledging having worked “as a team” with Trump.
The agreement “is the product of the legendary tenacity of our Palestinian people”Hamas reacted for its part. Cornered, deprived of its main leaders and greatly weakened by the bombings and ground operations of the IDF, the Palestinian terrorist movement found itself forced to agree to an agreement. Without necessarily obtaining a guarantee of the eventual departure of Israeli troops from Gaza, which was nevertheless presented until now as a red line.
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 of 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 which enabled Qatar to send a final resolution text to the two belligerents.
The question of after
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 very 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 on the eve of the Hamas terrorist attack, on this disastrous day in 2023.
Updated at 8:29 p.m. with details of the agreement according to Reuters; with details on Donald Trump’s role in the negotiations; the reactions of Joe Biden, the Prime Minister of Qatar and Hamas
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