Latest:
- Hamas is scheduled to release the first three hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
- Hamas says that the delay in handing over the names of these hostages is due to “technical field reasons.”
- Hamas media reported that Israeli forces began withdrawing from parts of the Gaza Strip.
- Trucks loaded with fuel and aid cross into the territory.
A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip went into effect Sunday after a delay of about three hours, halting a 15-month-old war that has brought devastation and seismic political change to the Middle East.
Residents and a medical worker in Gaza said they had not heard any new fighting or military raids for about half an hour before it was finally implemented.
Palestinian medics said Israeli air strikes and artillery attacks killed 13 Palestinians between 8:30 a.m. local time, when the 42-day ceasefire was supposed to begin, and 11:15 a.m. local time, when it actually took effect.
Israel blamed Hamas for the delay after the Palestinian militant group failed to provide a list of the names of the first three hostages to be released under the deal.
Hamas attributed the postponement to “field technical reasons,” without specifying what they were.
A Palestinian official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the delay occurred because the mediators requested 48 hours of “calm” before implementing the ceasefire, but that continued Israeli strikes until the deadline made it difficult to send aid. existing.
Two hours after the deadline, Hamas said it had sent the list of names, and Israeli officials confirmed receipt. Hamas said the hostages that were scheduled to be released on Sunday were Rumi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari.
Israel did not immediately confirm the names. However, one group representing hostage families in Gaza, the Forum for Families of Hostages and Missing Persons, said it welcomed news of their expected release and released short profiles of the three women.
Steinbrecher, 31, and Damari, 28, were taken from their homes in Kibbutz Kfar Azza in southern Israel. Gonen (24 years old), from the town of Kfar Varadim in northern Israel, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in the desert near the border between Gaza and Israel.
Canadian Maureen Leshem speaks to The National about waiting for the release of her cousin Rumi Gonen, who was kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7, 2023.
The upcoming ceasefire agreement could help end the war, which began after Hamas, which controls Gaza, attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities. Israel says another 400 Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting in Gaza.
Israel’s response turned much of the Gaza Strip into rubble and killed nearly 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
The war has also set off a confrontation across the Middle East between Israel and its arch-enemy Iran, which supports Hamas and other anti-Israel and anti-US paramilitaries across the region.
Israeli military spokesmen said in separate statements on Sunday that their aircraft and artillery attacked “terrorist targets” in northern and central Gaza, and that the army would continue to attack the Strip as long as Hamas did not abide by its obligations under the ceasefire.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said that at least 13 people were killed in the Israeli attacks and dozens were injured. Medics reported that tanks fired on the Zaytoun area of Gaza City, and said that an air strike and tank fire also hit the northern town of Beit Hanoun, prompting residents who had returned there in anticipation of a ceasefire to flee.
The Israeli army said in a separate statement that the siren that sounded in the Sderot area in southern Israel was a false alarm.
Aid is flowing, and Palestinians are returning to their homes
Media loyal to Hamas reported early Sunday morning that Israeli forces had begun withdrawing from areas in Gaza’s Rafah to the Philadelphia Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border.
Long queues of trucks loaded with fuel and aid supplies lined up at border crossings in the hours before the ceasefire took effect. The World Food Program said its trucks began crossing on Sunday morning.
The agreement requires that 600 trucks loaded with aid be allowed into Gaza every day during the initial six-week ceasefire, including 50 trucks loaded with fuel. Half of the 600 aid trucks will be delivered to northern Gaza, where experts have warned that famine is imminent.
Palestinians displaced by the fighting can be seen returning to Rafah in southern Gaza, including 26-year-old Mohammed Abdo.
“I want to see my house, all dust,” he told CBC News. “We were in misery for a year and three months. We were humiliated and displaced, not in one place but in 10 places.”
The three-stage ceasefire agreement came after months of intermittent negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, and came ahead of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump on January 20.
The first phase will last six weeks, during which 33 of the remaining 98 hostages – women, children, men over 50, the sick and wounded – will be released in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
They include 737 male and female prisoners and teenagers, some of them members of armed groups convicted of attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, as well as hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza who have been detained since the beginning of the war.
The first phase of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas stipulates the release of 33 Israeli hostages, including all women, children and men over the age of 50, in exchange for the release of approximately 1,900 Palestinian prisoners. Efrat Machikawa, the niece of 80-year-old Israeli hostage Gadi Musa, says her uncle will be part of this first phase, but the date of his return and his current health are unclear. Machikawa says she is glad “the suffering is over” and hopes Musa’s 14 grandchildren will see him again.
Hamas is scheduled to release the first three hostages on Sunday to the Red Cross in exchange for the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners.
Under the terms of the agreement, Hamas will inform the International Committee of the Red Cross of the meeting location inside Gaza, and the ICRC is expected to begin driving to that location to collect the hostages, an official involved in the operation said. He told Reuters.
US President Joe Biden’s team worked closely with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to push the deal further.
As his inauguration approached, Trump reiterated his demand for the deal to be concluded quickly, repeatedly warning that there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released.
But what will happen next in Gaza remains unclear in the absence of a comprehensive agreement on the future of the Strip after the war, which will require billions of dollars and years of work to rebuild.
Although the ceasefire’s stated goal is to end the war completely, it could easily collapse.
Hamas, which controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, has managed to survive despite losing its senior leadership and thousands of fighters.
Israel has pledged that it will not allow Hamas to return to power and has cleared large swaths of land inside Gaza, in a move widely seen as a step toward creating a buffer zone that would allow its forces to act freely against threats in the Strip.
In Israel, the return of the hostages may ease some of the public anger against Netanyahu and his right-wing government over the October 7 security failure that led to the bloodiest day in the country’s history.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today, Saturday, in a televised speech, that his government is treating the ceasefire with Hamas as temporary and reserves “the right to return to fighting.”
The war sent shockwaves across the region, leading to conflict with the Tehran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement, and putting Israel in direct conflict with its arch-rival Iran for the first time.
It also changed the Middle East. Iran, which has spent billions building a network of militant groups around Israel, has seen its “axis of resistance” destroyed and has been unable to inflict more than minimal damage on Israel in two major missile attacks.
Hezbollah, whose massive missile arsenal was once seen as Israel’s greatest threat, has seen its senior leadership killed and most of its missiles and military infrastructure destroyed.
On the diplomatic front, Israel has faced anger and isolation over the death and destruction in Gaza.
Netanyahu faces the International Criminal Court Arrest warrant On allegations of war crimes and separate charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Israel reacted angrily to both cases, dismissing the charges as politically motivated and accusing South Africa, which brought the original case to the International Court of Justice, as well as the countries that joined it, of anti-Semitism.
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