Israel and Palestine prepare for a long-sought ceasefire in Gaza
Mediator Qatar on Saturday announced a timeline for a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas to take effect the following day, beginning final preparations for a ceasefire that much of the world hopes for. will end 15 months of destruction in Gaza.
The agreement will take effect at 8:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, said Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry. spent months alongside the United States and Egypt struggling to broker a deal.
The Israeli government approved the deal early Saturday morning after hours of deliberation and amid internal rifts in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. The approval cleared the final hurdle, raising hopes for Israelis who want to see their loved ones returned and Gazans who survived one of the most intense bombing campaigns of the 21st century. .
“It’s a mixture of joy, sadness and longing for a new start,” said Mariam Moeen Awwad, 23, who has been displaced from her home in northern Gaza six times since the war began.
Ms. Awad had planned to move with her husband to her newly furnished apartment in November 2023. The war derailed those plans, leaving the couple in an overcrowded compound. and was eager to return home, she said, “if it was still there.”
In Israel, authorities have begun preparing to welcome dozens of hostages home without knowing whether they will return malnourished, injured or dead.
In his first speech since the ceasefire was adopted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech on Saturday night that 33 hostages would be released in the first phase of the agreement, “most in of them are still alive”.
Defending the deal, he also listed that Israel has achieved major strategic gains over the past few months, including the killing of top Hamas leaders. “As I promised you – we have changed the face of the Middle East,” he said.
According to an Israeli military official, three reception points have been set up to receive hostages along the Gaza border. They will be staffed by Israeli soldiers, as well as doctors and psychologists, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to protocol.
The release of the hostages is expected to be the first such major exchange since a week-long ceasefire early in the war.
“Those who were freed then were poorly nourished,” Hagar Mizrahi, a senior official at the Israeli Health Ministry, said of the hostages freed in the 2023 ceasefire agreement. “Imagine their situation now, 400 days from now. We are extremely worried about this.”
Of the women, elderly men and other hostages returned, many are believed to have been held in Hamas’ network of tunnels in Gaza, in conditions that may have left physical scars. physical and psychological. Israeli hospitals are preparing isolated areas so the hostages can begin to recover in privacy.
“Last time, we saw the Red Cross transferring hostages and some of them ran,” said Einat Yehene, a clinical psychologist who works with the Hostage Families Forum, an advocacy group. come and hug their loved ones.” “This time it will not be easy and similarly, with the physical and mental conditions we expect.”
In return, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be released. The total number of prisoners to be released and their identities are among many points of contention in negotiating a deal.
The new agreement also calls for allowing 600 trucks carrying aid into Gaza daily and negotiating the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory and a permanent end to the war.
Those negotiations are likely to be acrimonious and difficult, as were the months of negotiations that led to this week’s ceasefire agreement. Netanyahu is now facing an internal revolt within his ruling coalition, which his far-right partners have threatened to quit over opposition to the deal.
They have called for continued war against Hamas, the group that led the attack on Israel in October 2023 that killed about 1,200 people, took another 250 hostage and started the war.
Mr. Netanyahu also faces pressure from many Israelis who want all hostages returned, as well as from the outgoing U.S. president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the president-elect, Donald J. Trump. both wanted the war to end.
In his speech, Netanyahu said the deal protects Israel’s right to return to the fight against Hamas if it so chooses. The agreement also allows Israeli forces to stay in a buffer zone along Israel’s border with Gaza and Gaza’s border with Egypt, at least initially, he added.
“If we need to get back to fighting, we will do it in new ways and with great force,” he said.
Another uncertainty about how the deal might proceed comes from the chaotic, ruined state of Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have been killed since the war began and hundreds of thousands more live. without housing, clean water or readily available supplies of food or medicine. .
Israel’s campaign has left a power vacuum across much of Gaza and lawlessness has proven a dangerous factor in efforts to get aid to those in need. There is organized looting repeatedly stripped the truck of its cargoinclude words convoy of 100 vehicles holding on to UN aid late last year.
Israel has continued to attack Gaza since the ceasefire was announced and in the past 24 hours, 23 Palestinians have been killed and 83 others injured, the Gaza Health Ministry said. According to the ministry, more than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, without distinguishing between combatants and civilians.
Much-needed aid is expected to flow into Gaza once the ceasefire begins. Egypt, which shares a border with the enclave, was stepping up preparations on Friday to provide assistance including food and tents, according to Al Qahera News, an Egyptian state broadcaster.
