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After a devastating 15-month war, Israel and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a cease-fire deal that would end the conflict in Gaza and secure the release of the remaining 98 hostages held by the militants in the Gaza Strip.
The multi-phase deal — brokered and guaranteed by the United States, Egypt and Qatar — would mark the first ceasefire since a week-long cease-fire in November 2023. It will come into effect from Sunday
If fully implemented, it would permanently end the war that began with Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on the Jewish state.
How will the ceasefire begin?
The agreement called for an initial six-week ceasefire, in which both sides stopped fighting. The Israeli military will begin redeploying eastward outside urban centers across Gaza, the deal said, maintaining what Israel describes as a “buffer zone” on the Palestinian side of the border.
Critically, by the end of the first phase, the agreement calls for Israeli troops to leave the key passage known as the Netzerim Corridor that separates the north of the Strip from the south, and Gaza’s border with Egypt within 50 days.
Under the terms, the Rafah border crossing that connects Gaza to Egypt, which Israel captured and mostly destroyed last May, is expected to reopen. This would revive the Strip’s only connection to the outside world that was not directly controlled by Israel before the war.
Will the Palestinians be allowed to go home?
Gaza residents, including Palestinians displaced from northern to southern Gaza during the war, will be allowed to return to the remnants of their homes, which number in the tens of thousands.
An Israeli official said Israel insisted that a “security system” run by an unnamed private company would be set up at checkpoints leading from the south to the north. They will ensure that militants cannot return to northern Gaza, from where Hamas launched most of its October 7, 2023 attacks that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.
The agreement would require Israel to allow 600 trucks of humanitarian aid a day into the devastated region, half of which would be allocated to northern Gaza, where people have been starving, according to international observers.
According to health authorities in the Hamas-controlled region, the north has been hardest hit by Israel’s devastating retaliatory attacks, which have killed more than 46,000 people and reduced much of the Strip to rubble.
International aid groups say infrastructure to bring food, medicine, fuel and other goods into Gaza needs to be substantially increased, as the deal would at least triple access to the Strip.
Any hostages held in Gaza will be released?
For Israel, the key victory in the first phase of the deal was the return of 33 hostages still held by Hamas, including children, civilian women, female soldiers, the over-50s and the wounded.
It is not yet clear how many people who met that criteria will be alive, although an Israeli official said this week that “many of them, most of them” were still alive.
Under the agreement, three female hostages will be released on Sunday, followed by at least three more prisoners every seven days. Crucially for Israel, the living hostages will be released first, followed by the dead at the end of six weeks.
What about the Palestinian prisoners?
For every civilian hostage released, Israel has committed to release 30 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, increasing the number to 50 Palestinian prisoners for every female Israeli soldier. At this stage, the emphasis will be on freeing Gazans detained during the war, but not involved in the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas.
More than 100 Palestinians serving life sentences for murder and terrorism will also be released, some of whom will be deported to third countries.
Between 1,000 and 1,650 Palestinians are expected to be released during this phase of the deal, depending on the number of surviving hostages ultimately released from Gaza.
More details to be agreed?
After the 16th day of the cease-fire, the sides are set to begin negotiations on the second – and possibly more difficult – phase: the release of the remaining 65 hostages, including soldiers and men under 50, in exchange for a full Israeli. Withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire.
The number of Palestinian prisoners released for each Israeli soldier could be much higher in this second phase, which is expected to last six weeks.
Negotiators also discussed a possible third phase of the deal, in which the bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinian militants would be returned and Reconstruction of Gaza Qatari, Egyptian and UN supervision will begin. Phase II and III are increasingly likely to merge, however, analysts said.
Could the truce be broken?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said he is not willing to fully end the war until he achieves “total victory” and the complete “destruction” of Hamas.
This creates a distinct possibility of a resumption of hostilities after an initial six-week ceasefire.
Yet international pressure – potentially from the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, who has claimed credit for the ceasefire – could force the veteran Israeli leader to continue implementing the ceasefire agreement beyond the first phase and end the war altogether.
Cartography and Data Visualization by Aditi Bhandari
