By Ken Afor
On Wednesday, Israeli authorities and Hamas agreed to temporarily halt the conflict in order to liberate 50 Israeli hostages stuck in Gaza and permit the entry of humanitarian help.
In exchange, 150 Palestinians who are detained in Israel will be freed.
For days now, Qatar, the U.S., Israel and Hamas have been proclaiming that an agreement is about to be finalized, as Qatar has been performing private talks as a mediator.
According to Israeli estimates, Hamas has over 200 hostages who were taken during an attack on October 7 which resulted in 1,200 fatalities.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that 50 women and children will be exonerated from captivity over a period of four days, with a proposed break in the hostilities concurrently.
Should 10 more hostages be released, the break would be extended for a longer duration, yet it did not refer to a Palestinian prisoner swap, the statement noted.
“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.
In a statement, Hamas announced that, as part of a truce agreement, they would be releasing 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children currently held in Israeli jails.
Additionally, the agreement would permit hundreds of trucks filled with humanitarian, medical, and fuel aid to enter Gaza.
During the truce period, Israel pledged not to carry out any attacks or arrests in any area of Gaza, the statement said.
The Qatar government announced that, in exchange for a number of Palestinian women and children currently detained in Israeli prisons, they would be releasing fifty civilian women and children hostages from Gaza.
A statement declared that the commencement time of the ceasefire would be revealed within the next 24 hours.
The tragic outcomes of the war between Israel and Hamas-ruled Gaza, which have led to 13,300 civilian deaths, and the displacement of two-thirds of the 2.3 million population, have been acknowledged with the recent truce agreement – the first between the two parties.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu first met with his war cabinet and national security cabinet to discuss the deal before holding a meeting with his entire government.
Prior to unveiling the deal, Netanyahu noted that President Biden’s involvement had enabled them to create an even better pact with more prisoners released and fewer concessions demanded.
Nevertheless, his overall mission continued to remain unchanged.
“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.
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 lookout to defend our people and defeat the occupation.”
Release To Begin On Thursday:
It is anticipated that three Americans, one being a 3-year-old girl whose parents were victims of the Hamas attack on October 7th, will be amongst the hostages to be freed, in accordance with a U.S. senior official.
Israel’s government has stated that out of the hostages, more than half had foreign and dual citizenship from 40 different countries, such as the United States, Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, in addition to those of Israeli nationality.
Media outlets in Israel stated Thursday would mark the commencement of the hostages’ release, as per the agreement.
Yet, the implementation of the deal requires a waiting period of 24 hours in order to permit Israeli citizens the ability to request the Supreme Court to impede the liberating of Palestinian inmates, these reports indicated.
Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, Qatar’s Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry and the country’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, informed Reuters that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be carrying out operations in Gaza to help liberate the hostages.
“It’s going to be an intensive period where we’re going to be 24/7 in direct communication with the ICRC and the two parties making sure that we perfect the release of the hostages,” Al-Khulaifi said.
He said that the truce means there would be “no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing.”
Al-Khulaifi added that Qatar hopes the deal “will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire. And that’s our intention.”
Only four captives have been freed by Hamas thus far – Judith Raanan (59), her daughter Natalie Raanan (17), who were released on October 20th for ‘humanitarian reasons’, and Nurit Cooper (79) and Yocheved Lifshitz (85), separated two days later on October 23rd.
Islamic Jihad’s armed wing announced on Tuesday night that one of the Israeli hostages taken during their Oct. 7 raid, jointly executed with Hamas, had perished.
“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.
The evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City was ordered by Israel’s military forces, according to Mounir Al-Barsh, director-general of Gaza’s health ministry, who revealed this information in an interview with Al Jazeera TV.
Meanwhile, in the midst of attention being on the hostage release deal, it was stated that Israel threatened to take action against militants at the hospital within four hours, hinting that the fighting on the ground persisted.
Israel announced Tuesday that its forces had surrounded the Jabalia refugee camp, a close-knit area in Gaza City which Hamas and Israeli armored forces have been engaged in combat.
At least 33 fatalities and numerous casualties were reported by WAFA, a Palestinian news agency, in an Israeli airstrike on a sector of Jabalia.
Hamas-linked media outlets reported that an Israeli air raid on an apartment in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza resulted in the death of 10 people and the injury of 22 others.
