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A Hamas supporter holds a weapon as Palestinians react to news on a ceasefire deal with Israel, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, January 15 2025. Picture: REUTERS/HATEM KHALED
A Hamas supporter holds a weapon as Palestinians react to news on a ceasefire deal with Israel, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, January 15 2025. Picture: REUTERS/HATEM KHALED

Doha/Cairo/Jerusalem — Negotiators reached a phased deal on Wednesday to end the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas after 15 months of bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and inflamed the Middle East.

However, Israel warned some details still needed to be ironed out and voted on by the security cabinet and government on Thursday.

The complex accord, which has not been officially announced yet, outlines a six-week initial ceasefire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and release of hostages taken by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, an official said.

US President Joe Biden later confirmed a deal had been struck, and the prime minister of Qatar, one of the key mediators, said the ceasefire would take effect on January 19.

Palestinians celebrated in streets across Israeli-besieged Gaza — where they have faced an acute humanitarian crisis with severe shortages of food, water and fuel — as explosions from new Israeli air strikes continued.

Families of Israeli hostages and their friends celebrated the deal in the streets of Tel Aviv.

“The Israeli government must stand by its aims to return all the hostages and ensure from Gaza there is no more threat to the state of Israel...so there won’t be other parents standing here, just like me, in one or two or three years, being interviewed about their kidnapped children,” said Tzvika Mor, the father of a captive in Gaza, told Israel’s Channel 12.

In Israel, the return of the hostages may ease some of the public anger against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government over the October 7 2023 Hamas attack that led to the deadliest single day in the country’s history.

Netanyahu’s office said Hamas had dropped a last-minute demand and there were still a number of unresolved items in the deal. “We hope that the details will be closed tonight,” it said in a statement.

Hamas, Gaza’s dominant Palestinian militant group, said its delegation had handed mediators its approval for the ceasefire agreement and return of hostages.

The road ahead is complex, with political minefields likely.

Phase one of the deal entails the release of 33 Israeli hostages, including all women, children and men over 50.

Negotiations on implementing the second phase will begin by the 16th day of phase one and it is expected to include the release of all remaining hostages, a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

The third stage is expected to address the return of all remaining dead bodies and the start of Gaza's reconstruction supervised by Egypt, Qatar and the UN.

The pact follows months of tortuous, on-off negotiations conducted by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with the backing of the US, and comes just ahead of the January 20 inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump.

Trump said he would use the ceasefire deal as momentum to expand the Abraham Accords — US-backed agreements struck during his first presidency in 2017-21 that normalised Israel’s relations with several Arab countries.

Trump, who threatened “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if hostages were not released ahead of his January 20 inauguration, said he was “thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home”.

He wrote in a social media post on Wednesday that the deal would not have happened had he not been elected. “This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signalled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies.”

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres welcomed the development, stressing that the “priority now must be to ease the tremendous suffering caused by this conflict”.

If successful, the planned phased ceasefire would halt fighting that has reduced much of heavily urbanised Gaza to ruin and displaced most of the tiny enclave’s pre-war population of 2.3-million. The death toll is still rising daily.

That in turn could defuse tensions across the wider Middle East, where the war has stoked conflict in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and raised fears of all-out war between arch regional foes Israel and Iran.

If all goes smoothly, the Palestinians, Arab states and Israel must still agree on a vision for post-war Gaza, a formidable challenge involving security guarantees for Israel and many billions of dollars in investment for reconstruction.

One unanswered question is who will run Gaza after the war.

Israel has rejected any involvement by the Islamist Hamas, which had ruled Gaza since 2007 and is officially sworn to Israel’s destruction. But Israel has been almost equally opposed to rule by the Palestinian Authority, the body set up under the Oslo interim peace accords three decades ago that has limited governing power in the West Bank.

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar said he was cutting a visit to Europe short and flying home overnight to take part in security cabinet and government votes on the deal, meaning the votes was likely to be by or on Thursday.

Israeli troops invaded Gaza after Hamas-led gunmen broke through security barriers and burst into Israeli border-area communities in the October attack, killing 1,200 soldiers and civilians and abducting more than 250 foreign and Israeli hostages. The dead included nearly 400 young Israelis, gunned down at a music festival that day.

Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza has since killed more than 46,000 people, according to Gaza health ministry figures, with hundreds of thousands of displaced people struggling through the winter cold in tents and makeshift shelters.

The Hamas attack took Israel by surprise and shattered the myth that the country was virtually invincible. Israel responded by decimating Iran's proxies — Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas — with assassinations of their top leaders, and the December 8 fall of ally Syrian president Bashar al-Assad left Iran vulnerable.

As his inauguration approached, Trump repeated his demand that a deal be done swiftly, and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff worked with Biden’s team to nudge an agreement over the line.

“Donald Trump’s pressure tactics and warnings to Hamas and Israel have clearly been effective in reviving the drawn-out negotiations where the Biden administration proved unwilling to exert adequate pressure over Israel's leadership,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the Chatham House think-tank in London.

“After too many months of conflict, we feel tremendous relief for the hostages, for their families and for the people of Gaza,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo said. “Let’s hope this ceasefire will put an end to the fighting and mark the beginning of a sustained peace.”

Update: January 15 2025
This story has been updated with new information and background. 

Reuters 

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