After long weeks of negotiations, representatives of Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement in Gaza. The deal also provides for the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government must now give the green light.
Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip on Thursday and accused Hamas of backing down on the ceasefire agreement announced the day before to end 15 months of war, which has yet to be approved by the government. The truce, announced Wednesday by Qatar and the United States, is due to take effect on Sunday and provides in an initial six-week phase for the release of 33 hostages held in the Palestinian territory, in exchange for a thousand Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. .
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The definitive end of the war will be negotiated during this first phase. But according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, Hamas returned “on certain points” to “extort last minute concessions.”
Facts to remember:
- 33 Israeli hostages will be exchanged for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners
- The Israeli government has not yet confirmed the agreement
- “No certainty” about the fate of the two Franco-Israeli hostages according to Jean-Noël Barrot
“Strong intensification” of bombings
The security cabinet, which must approve the agreement before a vote in the council of ministers, will not meet until it has obtained guarantees from the mediating countries that Hamas “has accepted all elements of the agreement “, this office said on Thursday. A senior Hamas leader, Sami Abou Zouhri, rejected the Israeli accusations. The Islamist movement also warned that “any aggression, any bombing” by Israel on Gaza put the hostages in danger.
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In the Gaza Strip, where the announcement of the truce had triggered scenes of joy, residents discovered columns of smoke, debris and bodies in shrouds on Thursday morning, after Israeli strikes which left 81 dead in 24 hours, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health. Civil Defense reported a “strong intensification” of bombings and the army said it had struck around “50 targets” in 24 hours.
“We were waiting for the truce. It was the most joyful night since the attack of October 7” 2023, confided Saïd Allouch, who lost relatives in a strike in Jabalia, in the north of Gaza. “The shooting has not stopped, the planes are still in the sky and the situation is difficult,” said Mahmoud al-Qarnawi, a resident of the Al-Bureij refugee camp in the center of the territory.
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In Israel, cautious reactions
In Israel, the announcement of the agreement provoked cautious reactions. “We are a little afraid that the agreement will fall through, but we remain positive,” reacted Yulia Kedem, a resident of Tel Aviv. In the large city in central Israel, lampposts and public benches were covered with stickers saluting the memory of killed soldiers or hostages.
-Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich denounced a “dangerous” deal and said his party’s ministers would vote against it.
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Rappel
The war, which caused a level of destruction in Gaza “unprecedented in recent history”, according to the UN, was triggered on October 7, 2023 by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil. This attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of 251 people kidnapped, 94 are still held hostage in Gaza, 34 of whom are dead according to the army.
At least 46,788 people, mostly civilians, were 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 UN.
Release of 33 hostages
The announcement of the agreement followed an acceleration of negotiations, which had stalled for more than a year, in the run-up to Donald Trump’s return to the White House on Monday.
The agreement must come into force on Sunday for a first phase including “a total ceasefire”, according to US President Joe Biden, the release of 33 hostages, including women, children and the elderly, a withdrawal Israeli densely populated areas and an increase in humanitarian aid.
Israel had previously said it would release around 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in this first phase. The second phase should allow the release of the last hostages and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, said Joe Biden.
The post-war in suspense
The third and final stage must be devoted to the reconstruction of Gaza and the return of the bodies of hostages who died in captivity. A monitoring mechanism “will be set up in Cairo, managed by Egypt, Qatar and the United States”, the three mediator countries, according to the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed ben Abdelrahmane Al-Thani. During the first phase, the modalities of the second phase will be negotiated, namely “a definitive end to the war”, he added.
Egypt called on Thursday for the “without delay” implementation of the agreement and said it was ready to host an international conference on the reconstruction of Gaza. Already undermined by an Israeli blockade imposed since 2007, poverty and unemployment, the besieged Gaza Strip has been ravaged by war and almost all of its 2.4 million residents have been displaced.
The European Union announced Thursday the granting of humanitarian aid of 120 million euros to deal with the “catastrophic situation” in the territory. If it aims to silence the guns, the ceasefire leaves in suspense the political future of Gaza, where Hamas seized power in 2007.
Shelled for 15 months by the Israeli army, the Islamist movement appears very diminished but still far from being wiped out, contrary to the objective set by Benjamin Netanyahu.
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