The mediating country, Qatar, announced on Saturday that the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas would take effect the next day, triggering the final preparations for a truce that much of the world hopes will will end 15 months of destruction in Gaza.
The deal is expected to come into force at 8:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, said Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for Qatar’s foreign ministry, which has spent months alongside the United States and Egypt fighting to reach an agreement.
The Israeli government approved the deal early Saturday morning after hours of deliberations and amid internal divisions within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. The approval cleared a final hurdle, raising hope among Israelis who want their loved ones to return and Gazans who survived one of the most intense bombing campaigns of the 21st century.
“It’s a mixture of joy, sadness and yearning for a new beginning,” said Mariam Moeen Awwad, 23, who has been displaced six times from her home in northern Gaza since the start of the war. .
Ms. Awad had planned to move into her newly furnished apartment with her husband in November 2023. The war derailed those plans, leaving the couple in a crowded property and eager to return home, she said, “if so much so that he is still there.”
In Israel, authorities have begun preparations to welcome dozens of hostages home, without knowing whether they will return malnourished, traumatized or dead.
In his first remarks since approving the ceasefire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech Saturday evening that 33 hostages would be released in the first phase of the deal, “most of them alive.”
Defending the deal, he also pointed out that Israel had made major strategic progress in recent months, including the assassination of senior Hamas leaders. “As I promised you, we have changed the face of the Middle East,” he said.
Three reception points were established to receive the hostages along the border with Gaza, according to an Israeli military official. These will be made up of Israeli soldiers, as well as doctors and psychologists, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with protocol.
The release of the hostages is expected to be the first major exchange of its kind since a week-long ceasefire at the start of the war.
“Those who were released then were already malnourished,” Hagar Mizrahi, a senior Israeli Health Ministry official, said of the hostages released during the 2023 truce. “Imagine their situation now, after 400 more days. We are extremely concerned about this.
Among the women, elderly men and other hostages expected to be returned, many are believed to have been held in Hamas’ network of tunnels in Gaza, in conditions likely to leave physical and psychological scars. Israeli hospitals are preparing isolated areas where hostages can begin to recover in complete privacy.
“Last time we saw the Red Cross transferring the hostages, and some of them were running to their loved ones and hugging them,” said Einat Yehene, a clinical psychologist working for the Families Forum of hostages, a defense group. “It’s not going to be easy and similar this time, given the physical and emotional conditions we expect.”
In exchange, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners must be released. The total number of prisoners to be released and their identities were among the many contentious points involved in negotiations for a deal.
The new agreement also plans to authorize the daily entry into Gaza of 600 trucks carrying aid, as well as negotiations on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory and a definitive end to the war.
These negotiations are likely to be bitter and difficult, like the months of talks that led to this week’s ceasefire agreement. Mr Netanyahu is already facing an internal revolt within his governing coalition, which his far-right partners have threatened to leave over their opposition to the deal.
They called for a continuation of the war to root out Hamas, which carried out the October 2023 attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people, took another 250 hostages and sparked war.
Mr. Netanyahu also faces pressure from many Israelis who want all the hostages returned, as well as from the outgoing U.S. President, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the President-elect, Donald J. Trump, who both want the return. end of the war.
In his speech, Mr. Netanyahu said the deal preserved Israel’s right to resume war against Hamas if it wished. The agreement also allows Israeli forces to remain in a buffer zone along the Israel-Gaza border and the Gaza-Egypt border, he added, at least during the initial phase.
“If we must return to the fight, we will do it in new ways and with great power,” he said.
Further uncertainty about how the deal might unfold stems from the chaotic and devastated conditions in Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have been killed since the war began and hundreds of thousands more live homeless , without drinking water and without reserves of food or medicine. .
The Israeli campaign has left a power vacuum in much of Gaza, and lawlessness has proven a dangerous factor in efforts to deliver aid to people in need. Organized looting has repeatedly stripped trucks of supplies, including those from a 100-truck convoy of UN aid late last year.
Israel has continued to strike Gaza since the ceasefire announcement, and in the past 24 hours, 23 Palestinians were killed and 83 others injured, the Gaza Health Ministry announced Saturday morning. More than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Desperately needed aid is expected to flow into Gaza once the ceasefire begins. Egypt, which shares a border with the enclave, was stepping up preparations Friday to provide aid, including food and tents, according to Al Qahera News, Egypt’s state television channel.
