A look at the terms – and tensions – of the proposed ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas

CAIRO (AP) — If the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas According to the current plan, fighting will cease in Gaza for 42 days and dozens of Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be released. During this first phase, Israeli troops will withdraw to the outskirts of Gaza and many Palestinians will be able to return to what remains of their homes as increased aid arrives.

The question is whether the ceasefire will survive beyond this first phase.

That will depend on even more negotiations that are expected to begin within weeks. In these talks, Israel, Hamas and the American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators will have to address the difficult question of how Gaza will be governedIsrael demanding the elimination of Hamas.

Without an agreement within 42 days to begin the second phase, Israel could resume its campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas – even if dozens of hostages remain in the hands of the militants.

Hamas has agreed to a draft of the ceasefire agreement, two officials confirmed, but Israeli officials say the details are still being worked out, meaning some terms could change or even be finalized. The agreement as a whole could even fail. Here’s a look at the plan and the project’s potential pitfalls as seen by the Associated Press.

Hostage exchange for imprisoned Palestinians

During the first phase, Hamas must release 33 hostages in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. At the end of this phase, all women, children and elderly people detained by the militants should be released.

A hundred hostages remain captive inside Gazaa mix of civilians and soldiers, and the army estimates that at least a third of them are dead.

On the first official day of the ceasefire, Hamas must release three hostages, then four more on the seventh day. After that, it will release weekly releases.

It is complicated to know which hostages and how many Palestinians will be freed. The 33 include women, children and people over 50 – almost all civilians, but the deal also commits Hamas to releasing any surviving female soldiers. Hamas will release the living hostages first, but if the living do not meet the number 33, the bodies will be released. Not all of the hostages are being held by Hamas, so getting other militant groups to hand them over could be a problem.

In exchange, Israel will release 30 Palestinian women, children or elderly people for every living civilian hostage released. For every female soldier released, Israel will release 50 Palestinian prisoners, including 30 serving life sentences. In exchange for the bodies handed over by Hamas, Israel will release all the women and children it has detained in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7, 2023.

Dozens of men, including soldiers, will remain captive in Gaza, awaiting the second phase.

Israeli retreat and return of the Palestinians

In the first phase of the proposed deal, Israeli troops are to withdraw to a buffer zone about a kilometer wide inside Gaza along its borders with Israel.

This will allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes, particularly in Gaza City and northern Gaza. With most of Gaza’s population huddled in huge, squalid tent camps, Palestinians are desperate to return to their homes, even though many have been destroyed or badly damaged by the Israeli campaign.

But there are complications. During the past year of negotiations, Israel has insisted that it must control Palestinian movements northward to ensure that Hamas does not collect weapons in those areas.

Throughout the war, the Israeli army separated the north from the rest of Gaza by controlling the so-called Netzarim Corridor, a belt crossing the strip where troops eliminated the Palestinian population and established bases. This allowed them to search people fleeing north to central Gaza and bar anyone trying to return.

The draft consulted by the AP specifies that Israel must leave the corridor. During the first week, troops would withdraw from the main north-south coastal road – Rasheed Street – opening a route for Palestinians to return. On the 22nd day of the ceasefire, Israeli troops must leave the entire corridor.

Yet as negotiations continued Tuesday, an Israeli official insisted that the army would maintain control of Netzarim and that Palestinians returning to the north would have to pass inspections there, although he refused to provide any details. details. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed negotiations.

Resolving these contradictions could lead to friction.

Throughout the first phase, Israel will retain control of the Philadelphia Corridor, the strip of territory along the Gaza-Egypt border, including the Rafah crossing. Hamas has given up demanding that Israel withdraw from this area.

Humanitarian aid

As a first step, humanitarian aid to Gaza must be increased to the tune of hundreds of trucks per day carrying food, medicine, supplies and fuel to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. This is far more than Israel allowed throughout the war.

For months, aid groups have struggled to distribute even a trickle of aid entering Gaza to Palestinians due to Israeli military restrictions and widespread theft of aid trucks by gangs. The end of the fighting should alleviate this problem.

The need is great. Malnutrition and disease are rampant among Palestinians, crammed into tents and lacking food and clean water. Hospitals have been damaged and are short of supplies. The draft agreement specifies that equipment will be authorized to build shelters for tens of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed and to rebuild infrastructure such as electricity, sewers, communications and road networks.

But here too, implementation could pose problems.

Even before the war, Israel had restricted the entry of certain equipment, arguing that it could be used for military purposes by Hamas. Another Israeli official said arrangements were still being worked out regarding aid distribution and cleanup, but that the plan was to prevent Hamas from playing any role.

To further complicate matters, the Israeli government is still committed to its plan to ban UNRWA from operating and cut all ties between the agency and the Israeli government. The UN agency is the main aid distributor in Gaza and provides education, health and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees in the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The second phase

If all of this works, the teams still have to tackle the second phase. Negotiations on this subject are to begin on the 16th day of the ceasefire.

The outline of phase two is laid out in the draft: all remaining hostages are to be released in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and “lasting calm.”

But this seemingly basic exchange raises much bigger issues.

Israel has said it will not agree to a full withdrawal until Hamas’s military and political capabilities are eliminated and it can rearm – thereby ensuring that Hamas will no longer rule Gaza. Hamas says it will not hand over the last hostages until Israel withdraws all its troops from across Gaza.

Negotiations will therefore have to lead the two parties to agree on an alternative for governing Gaza. In reality, Hamas must agree to its own withdrawal from power – something it has said it is prepared to do, but it may seek to keep control of any future government, something Israel has vehemently rejected.

The draft agreement states that an agreement on the second phase must be reached by the end of the first.

The pressure will be on both sides to reach an agreement, but what happens if they can’t? This could go in several directions.

Hamas wanted written guarantees that the ceasefire would continue for as long as necessary to reach an agreement on phase two. He was satisfied with verbal guarantees from the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

Israel, however, has given no assurances. Thus, Israel could threaten new military actions to pressure Hamas in negotiations or could simply resume its military campaign, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened.

Hamas and the mediators are betting that the dynamics of the first phase will make their task difficult. Resuming the assault would risk losing the remaining hostages – which infuriates many against Netanyahu – although failing to destroy Hamas would also anger key political partners.

The third phase is expected to be less controversial: the bodies of the remaining hostages would be returned in exchange for a 3-5 year reconstruction plan to be implemented in Gaza under international supervision.