The Israeli government approved after midnight on Saturday the truce plan with Hamas providing for the release of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for those of Palestinian prisoners, according to a brief official statement.
“The government approved the plan to release the hostages,” indicates this text published by the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The hostage release plan will come into force on Sunday January 19, 2025,” adds the text.
The Israeli security cabinet earlier Friday gave the green light to the ceasefire agreement with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, paving the way for the truce to take effect on Sunday and the liberation on same day of the first hostages in exchange for Palestinian detainees.
“Having examined all political, security and humanitarian aspects of the proposed agreement and considering that it supports the achievement of war objectives”, the security cabinet “recommended to the government to approve this project”, indicated the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Despite the announcement of an agreement by Qatar and the United States, after more than 15 months of war, the Israeli army continued its airstrikes on Palestinian territory, killing more than a hundred people since Wednesday, according to emergency services. .
The agreement intended to end the war provides in a first phase of six weeks the release of 33 hostages held in the Gaza Strip since October 7, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The definitive end of the war will be negotiated during this first phase.
The first releases should take place on Sunday, the government announced. The families of the hostages were informed and preparations were being made to welcome them.
According to two sources close to Hamas, the first group should be made up of three Israeli women.
In exchange, Israel agreed “to release a certain number of important prisoners,” one of these sources said.
The Israeli authorities on Friday designated 95 detainees for release on Sunday, the majority women and minors, most of them arrested after October 7, and indicated that they had taken measures to “prevent any public demonstration of joy” upon their release.
Two Franco-Israelis, Ofer Kalderon, 54, and Ohad Yahalomi, 50, are on the list of the first hostages for release, according to Paris.
Both were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz with several of their children, released during the first truce in November 2023.
“This is the moment we have been waiting for […]I really hope that we see my grandfather come home, standing, alive,” Daniel Lifshitz, grandson of Oded Lifshitz, 84, kidnapped in Nir Oz, said Friday in Tel Aviv.
“Return to our land”
Even before the start of the truce, displaced Palestinians driven out by bombs and fighting are preparing to return home.
-” I will […] remove the rubble from the house and place my tent on the rubble,” anticipates Oum Khalil Bakr, refugee in Nousseirat.
“We know that it will be cold and that we will not have blankets to sleep in, but what matters is to return to our land,” adds this mother of ten children.
Many “will find their entire neighborhood destroyed” without any essential services, warns Mohamed Khatib, of the Medical Aid for Palestine organization in Gaza. “The suffering will continue […] but at least there is hope,” he adds.
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.
It led to the death 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 hostages in Gaza, of whom 34 are dead according to the army.
At least 46,876 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
Three-phase agreement
The agreement, the result of laborious negotiations, was unblocked in the run-up to Donald Trump’s return to the White House on Monday.
In addition to the first releases of hostages, the first phase includes, according to American President Joe Biden, “a total ceasefire”, an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas and an increase in humanitarian aid.
The second phase should allow the release of the last hostages, before the third and final stage devoted to the reconstruction of Gaza and the restitution of the bodies of hostages who died in captivity.
During the first phase, the modalities of the second will be negotiated, namely “a definitive end to the war”, according to the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed ben 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 inhabitants displaced.
The ceasefire leaves in doubt the political future of Gaza, where Hamas took power in 2007.
The Palestinian Authority, rival of the Islamist movement, is ready to “fully assume its responsibilities” in Gaza, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, declared on Friday in his first statement after the announcement of the agreement.
Fifteen months of war have considerably weakened Hamas, but it is still far from being wiped out, contrary to the objective set by Benjamin Netanyahu, according to experts.
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