Editorial
Qatar announced the existence of an agreement between Israel and Hamas which provides for a pause in the fighting and the release of 50 prisoners, including women and children.
"The break start time will be announced within the next 24 hours; it will last four days and will be subject to extension“Doha said in a statement.
The note released in the early hours of the morning by the Qatari Foreign Ministry describes the talks that led to the agreement as a mediation by Egypt, the United States and Qatar for a "humanitarian pause”.
"The agreement provides for the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons; the number of those released will be increased in the subsequent stages of the implementation of the agreement", is written in the note.
For every 10 additional hostages released, the pause may be extended by another day.
The truce agreement will also allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel supplies to enter Gaza, Hamas said in a statement.
Israel has pledged not to attack or arrest anyone in all areas of Gaza during the truce period.
The agreement is the first truce in a war in which Israeli bombings have razed large areas of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, killing 13.300 civilians in the small, densely populated enclave and leaving about two-thirds of its 2,3 million inhabitants homeless, according to Gaza authorities.
Before meeting with his full cabinet, Netanyahu met with his war cabinet and national security cabinet yesterday.
Ahead of the announcement, Netanyahu said U.S. President Joe Biden's intervention had helped improve the interim deal to include more hostages and fewer concessions.
Netanyahu also wanted to clarify that Israel's mission has not changed: “We are at war and we will continue the war until we have achieved all our objectives. Destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel“, he said in a recorded message at the beginning of the government meeting.
Hamas, in response, said: “As we announce the reaching of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger and our victorious fighters will remain on guard to defend our people and defeat the occupation.”
As Reuters reports, three Americans, including a 3-year-old girl whose parents were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, are expected to be among the hostages to be released, a senior U.S. official said.
In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half of the hostages were foreign or dual citizens of about 40 countries, including the United States, Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, the Israeli government said.
Qatar's chief negotiator in the ceasefire talks, Foreign Minister Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters the International Committee of the Red Cross would work inside Gaza to facilitate the release of the hostages.
Al-Khulaifi added that Qatar hopes that the agreement “be the seed of a broader agreement and a permanent ceasefire. And this is our intention."
Hamas has released only four prisoners so far: US citizen Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter Natalie Raanan, 17, on October 20, citing “humanitarian reasons,” and Israelis Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85 years, October 23rd.
The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the October 7 raid together with Hamas, said late yesterday that one of the Israeli hostages it is holding has died. “We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy stalled and this led to her death,” the Al Quds Brigades said on their Telegram channel.
The war continues while waiting for the truce to begin
Mounir Al-Barsh, director general of Gaza's Health Ministry, told Al Jazeera TV that the Israeli army had ordered the evacuation of the Indonesian hospital in Gaza City. Israel said the militants were operating from the facility and threatened to take action against them within four hours.
Israel also said yesterday that its forces had surrounded the Jabalia refugee camp, a congested urban extension of Gaza City, where Hamas has been fighting off advancing Israeli armored forces.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said 33 people were killed and dozens injured in an Israeli airstrike on part of Jabalia.
In southern Gaza, Hamas-affiliated media said 10 people were killed and 22 wounded by an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the town of Khan Younis.
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