Israel and Hamas have agreed to a four-day truce in the Gaza Strip to swap about 50 Israeli hostages for 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, while allowing hundreds of trucks of relief supplies into the battered coastal enclave.
The deal, which was approved late Tuesday by the Israeli government, is expected to include about 40 children and 13 civilian women released by Hamas over the coming days after the agreement goes into effect at 10am Thursday. U.S. officials said they expect at least three of the released hostages to be American citizens, including a four-year-old girl.
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In exchange, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a four-day pause in operations inside Gaza, a partial ban on Israeli overflights and surveillance to allow Hamas to consolidate control of the hostages for release, hundreds of trucks carrying much needed aid entering from Egypt, and the release of about 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails for non-violent crimes.
The agreement–largely brokered by the U.S. and Qatar–comes after more than 45 days of conflict that began Oct 7, when Hamas and its allies broke through the high security Gaza fence and attacked a series of Israeli neighbourhoods and military bases, killing about 1200 people and taking about 240 hostages. In the following six weeks, the Israeli military response has killed at least 14,100 people, according to Gaza health officials, levelled much of the strip’s infrastructure and displaced as many as three quarters of its 2.2 million inhabitants. The heavy fighting and bombing has effectively taken Gaza’s medical system out of service with tens of thousands of wounded lacking treatment, said a Hamas official.
“Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in order to arrange the release of 150 Palestinians held in Zionist jails,” said Abu Ahmed, a Hamas official in Beirut. “There will be a release of women and children prisoners taken during [the Oct. 7 operation] over the next four days and 300 trucks per day will be allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt to provide humanitarian supplies to the people, who are suffering tremendously from this illegal aggression.”
“[The agreement] is a victory for the Palestinian people… the release of prisoners from [Israeli] prisons was a goal of the [Oct. 7] operation,” he said.
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Israeli officials on Wednesday released 300 names of Palestinian prisoners eligible for release, about half of which could be swapped, to allow for judicial appeals by Israeli victims.
“The Palestinians eligible for release have been carefully vetted to prevent anyone with Israeli blood on their hands from being released,” said an Israeli security official, who asked not to be named for political reasons.
“There will not be a serious obstacle from the courts [over the release],” they said. “And there’s a mechanism to allow Hamas to get control of and release additional hostages in exchange for additional days of relief supplies.”
According to multiple international officials, there’s tentative optimism that the pause will lead to even further releases of civilian hostages. Israel has offered to extend the pause an additional 24 hours for each group of 10 hostages released.
“We believe Hamas is sincere in its willingness to produce additional hostages during the pause in fighting,” said a regional diplomat involved in the talks, who lacks permission from their government to talk to the media.
“The obstacles to organising this agreement have largely been difficulty in communicating between Hamas officials in Doha and Beirut with the Hamas officials in Gaza who planned the operation and control the hostages,” said the official. “There was a window before the ground invasion began [on Oct. 23] to put a similar deal together but once the Israelis entered Gaza, the commanders went to a war footing. The hope is that in the next few days, Hamas will be able to gather more civilians for additional releases.”
Abu Ahmed of Hamas said that while the group, which is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and U.K., will consider releasing more civilians, the same can’t be said about military hostages.
“We have offered since the days immediately after [Oct. 7] to arrange the complete release of all women and children and during this period, Hamas will attempt to secure the release of additional civilians,” he said, stressing that Israeli men or captured IDF soldiers of either sex would not be considered for release at this time.
Israeli officials refused to call the agreement a ceasefire on Wednesday and vowed to aggressively resume military operations against Hamas and its allies after the pause.
“We are at war, and we will continue the war,” Netanyahu told the Israeli media Tuesday. “[We will] continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza.”
“It’s in both sides’ interest to free some of the hostages,” said the regional diplomat. “Hamas never wanted more than 200 hostages, the situation is logistically taxing for Hamas and politically difficult for Israel and the U.S. Once this is cleared, the Israelis will return to the offensive.”
On Wednesday, the Lebanese based militant group Hezbollah, a key Hamas ally, said it would pause its daily exchanges of fire with the Israeli army along the tense northern border, if the ceasefire remains in effect, said a Hezbollah commander in south Lebanon.
“The resistance has orders to follow the ceasefire if the [Israelis] also follow it,” said Abu Jawwad. “We will pause our military operations to allow our allies in Hamas the room to conduct their political operations. But military operations will continue after.”
