Gaza: Israel thanks Donald Trump and Joe Biden for their key role in the release of hostages

The news was welcomed by many capitals and international organizations. And thousands of Palestinians exulted across the besieged and war-devastated Gaza Strip triggered by an attack of unprecedented scale by the Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023. But the Israeli government itself did not not confirmed the agreement, and the Civil Defense of the Gaza Strip again reported Wednesday evening the death of 20 people in Israeli strikes that occurred after the announcement.

Liberation. The “final details” are still being finalized, according to a statement released overnight by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However, he has already thanked Donald Trump and Joe Biden, whose teams worked closely on the subject, for their help in the agreement for “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 (far right) denounced a “dangerous” agreement and specified that the ministers of his party would vote against.
Disaster. 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 Health Ministry 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.

Reconstruction. 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. .

Nightmare. “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. 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.

© Agence France-Presse