Alexander Cornwell and Nidal al-Mughrabi
JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) – The Israeli government has approved a deal with the Palestinian militant group Hamas on a ceasefire and the release of hostages in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday, a day before the deal was scheduled to begin.
In the early hours of Saturday morning after a meeting that lasted more than six hours, the government ratified an agreement that could pave the way for an end to the 15-month war in the Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas.
“The government has approved the framework for the return of the hostages. The framework for the release of the hostages will take effect on Sunday,” Netanyahu’s office said in a brief statement.
In Gaza, Israeli warplanes have continued heavy attacks since a ceasefire was agreed. Doctors in Gaza said an Israeli air strike early Saturday killed five people in a tent in the Mawasi area west of Khan Younis in the enclave’s south.
This brings the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli bombing to 119 since the agreement was announced on Wednesday.
After the Israeli government approved it, lead US negotiator Brett McGurk said the plan was on track.
The ceasefire will take effect at 0630 GMT on Sunday, a spokesman for Qatar’s foreign ministry said on X. The White House expects the three hostages to be released to Israel in the afternoon via the Red Cross.
“We’ve locked down every detail in this agreement. We’re pretty confident … that it’s ready to be implemented on Sunday,” McGurk told CNN from the White House.
Under the agreement, the three-phase ceasefire begins with an initial six-week phase when hostages held by Hamas will be exchanged for prisoners and detainees in a prison in Israel.
Thirty-three of the 98 remaining Israeli hostages, including women, children, men over 50, and sick and wounded prisoners, are to be released at this stage. In return, Israel will release almost 2,000 Palestinians from its prisons.
They include 737 prisoners, women and teenagers, some of whom are members of Palestinian militant groups convicted of attacks that have killed dozens of Israelis, as well as hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza in detention since the war began.
Israel’s Justice Ministry released their details early Saturday, along with a cease-fire agreement that said 30 Palestinian prisoners would be freed for every female hostage on Sunday.
After Sunday’s hostage release, McGurk said, the agreement calls for the release of four more hostages after seven days, followed by the release of three more every seven days after that.
THE HARDLINERS ARE AGAINST THE CRUISE
With the deal fiercely opposed by some hardliners in the Israeli government, media reports say 24 ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition government voted in favor of the deal while eight opposed it.
Opponents said the cease-fire agreement represented a capitulation to Hamas. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to resign if it was approved and called on other ministers to vote against it. However, he said that he will not overthrow the government.
His fellow hardliner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has also threatened to quit the government unless he returns to the war and defeats Hamas after the first phase of the six-week ceasefire.
After a last-minute delay on Thursday that Israel blamed on Hamas, Israel’s security cabinet voted Friday in favor of a ceasefire agreement, a condition before a full cabinet vote.
Israel launched its attack on Hamas in Gaza after the group’s fighters invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
The war between Israeli forces and Hamas leveled much of urbanized Gaza, killing more than 46,000 people and several times displacing most of the enclave’s pre-war population of 2.3 million, according to Gaza authorities.
If successful, the ceasefire could ease hostilities elsewhere in the Middle East, where fighting has spread to Iran and its proxies – Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq – as well as the occupied West Bank.
Civilians in Gaza are facing a humanitarian crisis due to hunger, cold and disease. The cease-fire agreement calls for an increase in aid, and international organizations have stationed humanitarian aid trucks at Gaza’s borders to deliver food, fuel, medicine and other vital supplies.
The Palestinian aid agency UNRWA said on Friday that it has 4,000 aid trucks, half of which are food, ready to enter the coastal belt.
Palestinians waiting for food in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday said they hoped the ceasefire would mean an end to hours-long queues to fill a plate.
“I hope it will happen so that we can cook in our homes and make whatever we want without having to go to soup kitchens and exhaust ourselves for three or four hours trying to get (food) — sometimes not even make it home,” said displaced Palestinian Reeham Sheikh al-Eid.