Israeli security cabinet meets on ceasefire deal

Israel’s security cabinet met Friday to vote on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal that should take effect this weekend.

If approved, the agreement would halt fighting and bombardment in Gaza’s deadliest-ever war and initiate on Sunday the release of hostages held in the territory since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Under the deal struck by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, the ensuing weeks should also see the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Israeli strikes have killed dozens of people since the deal was announced, while Israel’s military said Thursday it had hit about 50 targets across Gaza over the past day.

The ceasefire would take effect on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president.

“The security cabinet meeting to discuss and vote on the deal has started,” an Israeli official told AFP.

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Should the plan be approved, “the release of the hostages can proceed according to the planned framework, with the hostages expected to be released as early as Sunday”, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Even before the start of the truce, Gazans displaced by the war to other parts of the territory were preparing to return home.

“I will go to kiss my land,” said Nasr al-Gharabli, who fled his home in Gaza City for a camp further south in the territory.

“If I die on my land, it would be better than being here as a displaced person.”

In Israel, there was joy but also anguish over the 251 hostages taken on October 7, the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

Kfir Bibas, whose second birthday falls on Saturday, is the youngest hostage.

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Hamas said in November 2023 that Kfir, his four-year-old brother Ariel and their mother Shiri had died in an air strike, but with the Israeli military yet to confirm their deaths, many are clinging to hope.

“I think of them, these two little redheads, and I get shivers,” said 70-year-old Osnat Nyska, whose grandchildren attended nursery with the Bibas brothers.

‘Confident’

Once the security cabinet votes on the agreement, it will go to the government for final approval.

Two far-right ministers had voiced opposition to the deal, with one threatening to quit the cabinet, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he believed the ceasefire would go ahead on schedule.

“I am confident, and I fully expect that implementation will begin, as we said, on Sunday,” he said.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israel pounded several areas of the territory, killing more than 100 people and wounding hundreds since the the deal was announced Wednesday.

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Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned that Israeli strikes were risking the lives of hostages due to be freed under the deal, and could turn their “freedom… into a tragedy”.

The war began with the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Of the 251 people taken hostage, 94 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s ensuing campaign has destroyed much of Gaza, killing 46,788 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.

Trump and Biden

The ceasefire agreement followed intensified efforts from mediators after months of fruitless negotiations, and with Trump’s team taking credit for working with US President Joe Biden’s administration to seal the deal.

“If we weren’t involved in this deal, the deal would’ve never happened,” Trump said in an interview Thursday.

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A senior Biden official said the unlikely pairing had been a decisive factor in reaching the deal.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, announcing the agreement on Wednesday, said an initial 42-day ceasefire would see 33 hostages released, including women, “children, elderly people, as well as civilian ill people and wounded”.

The Israeli authorities assume the 33 are alive, but Hamas has yet to confirm that.

Also in the first phase, Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza’s densely populated areas and allow displaced Palestinians to return “to their residences”, he said.

Two sources close to Hamas told AFP three Israeli women soldiers would be the first to be released on Sunday evening.

The women may in fact be civilians, as the militant group refers to all Israelis of military age who have undergone mandatory military service as soldiers.

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Once released they would be received by Red Cross aid workers as well as Egyptian and Qatari teams, one source said on condition of anonymity.

They would then be taken to Egypt where they would undergo medical examinations and then to Israel, the source said.

Israel “is then expected to release the first group of Palestinian prisoners, including several with high sentences”, the source added.

Egypt was on Friday hosting technical talks on the implementation of the truce, according to state-linked media.

French President Emmanuel Macron said French-Israeli citizens Ofer Kalderon and Ohad Yahalomi were on the list of 33 hostages to be freed in the first phase.

Biden said the second phase could bring a “permanent end to the war”.

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In aid-starved Gaza, where nearly all 2.4 people have been displaced at least once, humanitarians worry about the monumental task ahead.

“Everything has been destroyed, children are on the streets, you can’t pinpoint just one priority,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) coordinator Amande Bazerolle told AFP.

– By: © Agence France-Presse