UPDATED 4:09 A.M. (11/22)
GAZA/JERSUALEM (Reuters) -Israel and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days, to let in aid and release at least 50 hostages captured by militants in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel.
The first truce in a brutal near seven-week-old war, reached after mediation by Qatar, was hailed around the world as a sign of progress that could ease the suffering of Gaza’s civilians and bring more Israeli hostages home. Israel said the ceasefire could be extended further, as long as more hostages were freed.
Hamas and allied groups captured around 240 hostages when gunmen rampaged through southern Israeli towns on Oct. 7. Previously, Hamas had released just four.
The official start time for the truce is expected to be announced within 24 hours, with the first hostages to go free on Thursday.
A statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said 50 women and children would be released over four days at a rate of at least 10 per day. Beyond that, the truce could be extended as long as an additional ten hostages were freed per day.
It made no mention of the release of Palestinian detainees, but Israel’s justice ministry published a list of 300 names of Palestinian prisoners who could be freed.
“Israel’s government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal,” said the government statement.
Hamas said the initial 50 hostages would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. Hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel supplies would enter Gaza, while Israel would halt all air sorties over southern Gaza and maintain a daily six-hour daytime no-fly window in the north, it said.
Israel has placed Gaza under siege and relentless bombardment since the Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, more than 14,000 Gazans have been killed, around 40% of them children, according to medical officials in the Hamas-ruled territory, figures deemed reliable by the United Nations.
Qatar’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters the truce meant there would be “no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing”.
Qatar hopes the deal “will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire. And that’s our intention,” he said.
Pending the start of the truce there was no let-up in fighting. As morning broke, smoke from explosions could be seen rising above northern Gaza in live Reuters video from across the fence.
Israel’s military released footage of soldiers shooting in narrow alleyways and said it had carried out air strikes. Its “forces continue to operate within the Strip’s territory to destroy terrorist infrastructure, eliminate terrorists and locate weaponry”, it said.
‘WHAT TRUCE CAN THERE BE?’
The truce deal is a first small step towards peace in the most violent ruction of the 75-year-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The past seven weeks have shocked the world because of the suffering of civilians on both sides, beginning with the killing of Israeli families in their homes and continuing with destruction rained down on Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.
“What truce can there be after what happened to us? We are all are dead people,” said Mona, a woman in Gaza whose nieces and nephews were among those killed by an Israeli air strike that hit the home of the Seyam family. “This will not bring back what we lost, will not heal our hearts or make up for the tears we shed.”
Kamelia Hoter Ishay, whose 13-year-old granddaughter Gali Tarashansky is believed held in Gaza, said she would not believe reports of a deal until she got a call that the girl was freed.
“And then I’ll know that it’s really over and I can breathe a sigh of relief and say that’s it, it’s over,” she said.
Both Israel and Hamas said that the truce would not halt their broader missions: “We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel,” Netanyahu said in a recorded message.
Hamas said in its statement: “As we announce the striking of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will remain on the look-out to defend our people and defeat the occupation.”
Still there was some hope of a step towards broader peace.
“We hope the truce will happen and there will be good solutions, and we hope people will live peacefully, return to their homes and workplaces with stability,” said Abu Jihad Shameya, a displaced man from north Gaza who had taken refuge in the main southern city Khan Younis.
“May God not prolong this hardship.”
FOREIGNERS AMONG THOSE TO GO FREE
U.S. President Joe Biden was among international leaders who welcomed the deal. Three Americans, including a 3-year-old girl whose parents were killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, are expected to be among the hostages to be released, a senior U.S. official said.
More than half the hostages hold foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries, Israel has said.
Implementing the deal must wait for 24 hours to give Israeli citizens the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli media reported.
Qadura Fares, head of the Commission for Prisoners’ Affairs in the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, told Reuters that among more than 7,800 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel were about 85 women and 350 minors.
The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, said late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it has held since the raid had died.
(Reporting by Reuters journalists in Gaza, James Mackenzie, Dan Williams, Emily Rose and Henriette Chacar in Jerusalem, Andrew Mills in Doha, Steve Holland and Jonathan Landay in Washington, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo and Reuters bureauxWriting by Lincoln Feast, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Peter GraffEditing by Cynthia Osterman, Stephen Coates, Simon Cameron-Moore and Nick Macfie)
UPDATED 8:27 P.M.
GAZA/TEL AVIV (Reuters) -Israel’s government voted on Wednesday to back a deal for Palestinian Hamas militants to free 50 women and children held as hostages in Gaza in exchange for a four-day pause in fighting, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Officials from Qatar, which has been mediating negotiations, as well as the U.S., Israel and Hamas have for days been saying a deal was imminent.
Hamas is believed to be holding more than 200 hostages, taken when its fighters surged into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
A statement by the Prime Minister’s Office said 50 women and children will be released over four days, during which there will be a pause in fighting.
For every additional 10 hostages released, the pause would be extended by another day, it said, without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange.
A U.S. official briefed on the discussions had said ahead of the deal that it would include the exchange of 150 Palestinian prisoners.
“Israel’s government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal,” said the statement, released after hours of deliberation that were closed to the press.
Israel’s Ynet reported that all but three ministers in the far-right Jewish Power party voted in favour of the deal.
The accord will see the first truce of a war in which Israeli bombardments have flattened swathes of Hamas-ruled Gaza, killed 13,300 civilians in the tiny densely populated enclave and left about two-thirds of its 2.3 million people homeless, according to authorities in Gaza.
Before gathering with his full government, Netanyahu met on Tuesday with his war cabinet and wider national security cabinet over the deal.
Ahead of the announcement of the deal, Netanyahu said the intervention of U.S. President Joe Biden had helped to improve the tentative agreement so that it included more hostages and fewer concessions.
But Netanyahu said Israel’s broader mission had not changed.
“We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel,” he said in a recorded message at the start of the government meeting.
The pause would also allow for humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Israeli media including Channel 12 news said the first release of hostages was expected on Thursday. Implementing the deal must wait for 24 hours to give Israeli citizens the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners, reports said.
Hamas has to date released only four captives: U.S. citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on Oct. 20, citing “humanitarian reasons,” and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on Oct. 23.
The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, said late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it has held since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel had died.
“We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death,” Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel.
HOSPITAL ORDERED TO EVACUATE
As attention focused on the hostage release deal, fighting on the ground raged on. Mounir Al-Barsh, director-general of Gaza’s health ministry, told Al Jazeera TV that the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City. Israel said militants were operating from the facility and threatened to act against them within four hours, he said.
Hospitals, including Gaza’s biggest Al Shifa, have been rendered virtually inoperable by the conflict and shortages of critical supplies. Israel claims that Hamas conceals military command posts and fighters within them, a claim that Hamas and hospital staff deny.
On Tuesday, Israel also said its forces had encircled the Jabalia refugee camp, a major urban flashpoint and Hamas militant stronghold.
According to the United Nations, most Palestinians in Gaza are registered as refugees because they or their ancestors were displaced by the 1948 war of Israel’s creation.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said 33 people were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli air strike on part of Jabalia, a congested urban extension of Gaza City where Hamas has been battling advancing Israeli armoured forces.
In southern Gaza, Hamas-affiliated media said 10 people were killed and 22 injured by an Israeli air strike on an apartment in the city of Khan Younis.
Reuters could not immediately verify the accounts of fighting on either side.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Emily Rose and Henriette Chacar in Jerusalem, Andrew Mills in Doha, Steve Holland and Jonathan Landay in Washington, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo and Reuters bureaux; writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Stephen Coates)
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GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel‘s government voted on Wednesday to back a deal for Palestinian Hamas militants to free 50 women and children held as hostages in Gaza in exchange for a four-day pause in fighting, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Officials from Qatar, which has been mediating negotiations, as well as the U.S., Israel and Hamas have for days been saying a deal was imminent.
The accord will see the first truce of a war in which Israeli bombardments have flattened swathes of Hamas-ruled Gaza, killed 13,300 civilians in the tiny densely populated enclave and left about two-thirds of its 2.3 million people homeless, according to authorities in Gaza.
Before gathering with his full government, Netanyahu met on Tuesday with his war cabinet and wider national security cabinet over the deal. Hamas is believed to be holding more than 200 hostages, taken when its fighters surged into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
Ahead of the announcement of the deal, Netanyahu said the intervention of U.S. President Joe Biden had helped to improve the tentative agreement so that it included more hostages and fewer concessions.
But Netanyahu said Israel‘s broader mission had not changed.
“We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel,” he said in a recorded message at the start of the government meeting.
A U.S. official briefed on the discussions said ahead of the deal that it would include the exchange of 150 Palestinian prisoners.
The pause would also allow for humanitarian aid into Gaza.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Emily Rose and Henriette Chacar in Jerusalem, Andrew Mills in Doha, Steve Holland and Jonathan Landay in Washington, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo and Reuters bureaux; writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Deepa Babington and Cynthia Osterman)
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