Israel and Hamas at war | First releases of hostages expected on Sunday

(Jerusalem) The Israeli security cabinet met on Friday to approve the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, which is due to come into force on Sunday between Israel and Hamas with the first releases of hostages expected the same day.

Despite the announcement of an agreement to end 15 months of war, the Israeli army continued its airstrikes on Palestinian territory, which have left more than a hundred dead since Wednesday, according to emergency services. The army announced Thursday that it had targeted around “50 targets” in 24 hours.

The agreement announced by Qatar and the United States provides in a first phase of six weeks for the release of 33 hostages held in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

The definitive end of the war will be negotiated during this first phase.

The meeting of the Israeli security cabinet, which began Friday and will be followed by a council of ministers during the day or Saturday, follows the guarantees obtained on the release of the hostages, according to the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The first releases should take place on Sunday, the government said, while the families of the hostages had been informed and preparations were underway to welcome them.

“Subject to approval [de l’accord] by the security cabinet and the government, and the implementation of the agreement, the release of the hostages can take place according to the planned plan, the [premiers] hostages to be released on Sunday,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said.

The prime minister is assured of obtaining a majority in favor of the agreement despite opposition from far-right ministers.

Israel said Thursday that Hamas had returned to “certain points” of the agreement to “extort last minute concessions”, which a senior leader of the Islamist movement, Sami Abou Zouhri, denied.

“Kiss my land”

Even before the start of the truce, displaced Palestinians driven from their homes by the war were preparing to return to their homes.

“I’m waiting for Sunday morning, when they will announce the ceasefire,” said Nasr al-Gharabli, who fled his home in the northern Gaza City to take shelter in a camp further south. south.

“I’m going to go embrace my land, and I already regret having left it. If I had died on my land, it would have been better than being moved here,” he added.

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 bloody 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, 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 UN.

Three-phase agreement

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 latter assured Thursday that the agreement would never have been concluded without the pressure exerted by him and his future administration. “We changed the course of things, and we changed it quickly,” he said.

The first phase of the agreement includes “a complete ceasefire”, according to US President Joe Biden, the release of 33 hostages, including women, children and the elderly, an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas populated areas and an increase in humanitarian aid.

Israel for its part “will release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners,” Mr. Biden said on Wednesday.

The second phase should allow the release of the last hostages, he added.

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.

During the first phase, the modalities of the second phase will be negotiated, namely “a definitive end to the war”, according to the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdelrahmane Al-Thani.

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 ceasefire leaves in doubt 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, according to experts.