Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire deal with Israel, Qatar and the United States announced, after more than 460 days of a war that devastated Gaza.
Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said on Wednesday that the ceasefire agreement would come into force on Sunday, but added that work on implementation measures continued with Israel and Hamas. Israel says some final details remain to be determined and an Israeli government vote is expected on Thursday.
Israel has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians since its war against the enclave began in October 2023.
The agreement includes a temporary ceasefire that will, for the time being, put an end to the destruction inflicted on Gaza, as well as the release of captives held in Gaza and many prisoners held by Israel. The agreement will also, finally, allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes – although, after Israel’s campaign of deliberate destruction, many homes have disappeared.
The first phase
The initial phase will last six weeks and involve a limited exchange of prisoners, the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and an influx of aid into the enclave.
Thirty-three Israeli captives, including women, children and civilians over the age of 50 – captured during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 – will be released. In return, Israel will release a greater number of Palestinian prisoners during this phase, including prisoners serving life sentences. Among the Palestinians released, there are around a thousand people arrested after October 7.
Along with the exchange of captives, Israel will withdraw its forces from Gaza’s population centers to areas no more than 700 meters inside Gaza’s border with Israel. However, this could exclude the Netzarim Corridor, the militarized belt that divides the Gaza Strip in two and controls movement along it – the withdrawal from Netzarim should instead be carried out in stages.
Israel will allow civilians to return home to the enclave’s besieged north, where aid agencies warn famine may have set in, and allow an influx of aid into the enclave – up to 600 trucks a day .
Israel will also allow injured Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment and will open the Rafah crossing with Egypt seven days after the start of the implementation of the first phase.
Israeli forces will reduce their presence in the Philadelphia Corridor, the border area between Egypt and Gaza, and then withdraw completely no later than the 50th day after the agreement takes effect.
What happens after the first phase?
The details of the second and third phases, although agreed in principle, must be negotiated during the first phase. US President Joe Biden said the ceasefire would continue even if negotiations on the second and third phases extend beyond the first six weeks of the first phase.
Critically, Israel insisted that no written guarantees be given to rule out a resumption of its attacks once the first phase is over and its civilian prisoners are returned.
However, according to an Egyptian source cited by the Associated Press news agency, the three mediators involved in the negotiations – Egypt, Qatar and the United States – gave Hamas verbal guarantees that the negotiations would continue and that all three would push to reach an agreement that the second and third stages would be implemented before the expiration of an initial six-week window.
What is planned for the second phase?
If it is determined that conditions are met for a second phase, Hamas will release all remaining prisoners, mostly male soldiers, in exchange for the release of more Palestinians held in the system Israeli prison. Furthermore, according to the current document, Israel would begin its “complete withdrawal” from Gaza.
However, these conditions, which have not yet been voted on by the Israeli cabinet, contradict the stated positions of many far-right members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu’s cabinet, on whom he also relies for support. . like Netanyahu’s past positions, in which he repeatedly used Hamas’ presence in Gaza to prolong the conflict.
The third phase
Details of a third phase remain unclear.
If the conditions of the second stage are met, the third phase will see the handover of the bodies of the remaining prisoners in exchange for a three to five year reconstruction plan which will be carried out under international supervision.
There is currently no agreement on who will administer Gaza beyond the ceasefire. The United States has pushed for a reformed version of the Palestinian Authority to do this.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that post-war reconstruction and governance envisions the Palestinian Authority inviting “international partners” to establish an interim government authority to manage essential services and oversee the territory.
Other partners, including Arab states, would provide forces to provide security in the short term, he said in a speech to the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.
For such a plan to work, it would need the support of Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, which has said it would only support the project if there was a path to a Palestinian state. This poses another point of contention for Israeli lawmakers, although Israel agreed to a two-state solution in the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.
Israel has not yet proposed an alternative form of governance in Gaza.
