The Israeli government is due to give the green light on Thursday to the agreement announced by Qatar and the United States on a ceasefire in Gaza, after more than 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas that has left tens of thousands dead in the Palestinian territory.
After more than a year of deadlock, the indirect negotiations in Doha accelerated in the run-up to the departure from the White House of Joe Biden, who was replaced on Monday by Donald Trump. They culminated on Wednesday evening in the formalisation of a three-phase agreement providing for a truce from Sunday, the release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for a thousand Palestinian prisoners, and an increase in humanitarian aid.
The news was welcomed by many capitals and international organisations. And thousands of Palestinians rejoiced across the besieged Gaza Strip, devastated by the war triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israel by the Islamist movement Hamas on 7 October 2023.
But the Israeli government itself has not confirmed the agreement, and the Gaza Strip's Civil Defence still reported on Wednesday evening that 20 people had died in Israeli strikes after the announcement.
The ‘final details’ are still being finalised, according to a statement published overnight by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, he has already thanked Donald Trump and Joe Biden, whose teams worked closely together on the issue, for their help in the agreement to ‘free the hostages’.
A meeting of the Israeli Council of Ministers is expected to be held on Thursday to examine the agreement and, barring any surprises, validate it, as the head of government has a majority, despite some dissension.
While Israeli President Isaac Herzog hailed the agreement as a ‘good choice’, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (far right) denounced the agreement as ‘dangerous’ and said his party's ministers would vote against it.
The 7 October attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures. Of the 251 people abducted on the day of the attack, 94 are still being held in Gaza, 34 of whom are dead according to the army.
At least 46,707 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel's retaliatory military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which has also caused a humanitarian disaster, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health deemed reliable by the UN.
The main elements of the agreement were made public by the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed ben Abdelrahmane Al-Thani, whose country is one of the mediators between Israel and Hamas, and Joe Biden.
It provides for an initial six-week phase to come into effect on Sunday, including a ceasefire, the release of 33 hostages and an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas.
The second phase should also see the release of the last hostages and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Mr Biden went on to explain. The third and final phase should be devoted to the reconstruction of Gaza and the return of the bodies of the hostages killed during their captivity.
‘A monitoring mechanism to oversee the application of the agreement will be set up in Cairo and will be managed by Egypt, Qatar and the United States’, said the Prime Minister of Qatar.
Joe Biden assured that the first phase of the agreement would result in a ‘complete and total’ ceasefire.
Humanitarian aid should increase during the first phase, which should enable negotiations to take place with a view to reaching the second phase, namely ‘a definitive end to the war’, he added.
Already undermined by an Israeli blockade imposed since 2007, poverty and unemployment, the besieged Gaza Strip has been ravaged by war and the vast majority of its 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced and are living in particularly harsh conditions.
‘I can't believe that this nightmare, which has been going on for over a year, is starting to come to an end,’ Randa Samih, a displaced person from Gaza City in the Nousseirat camp, told AFP.
‘We have lost so many people, we have lost everything’, added the 45-year-old Palestinian, while spontaneous gatherings of joy took place in several places, including in front of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, where so many people have died since the start of the war.
While the ceasefire silences the weapons, it leaves open the political future of the territory where Hamas, now very weakened, took power in 2007.
With AFP.
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