After 47 days of war, diplomatic efforts and pressure from the families of the hostages, Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement by which the Islamist armed group will release 50 of the nearly 240 people it kidnapped in its attack on October 7, in exchange for four days of truce, the entry of hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners. In both cases they are women and children. The agreement, mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, is the most important diplomatic milestone since the conflict broke out, but it is far from drawing an end. “We will not stop after the ceasefire,” stressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to allay fears in his Executive that international pressure would make the temporary cessation of hostilities definitive.
The implementation of the agreement, confirmed by both Israel and Hamas, will be done in phases: each day about 12-13 hostages will be handed over and about 40 Palestinian prisoners will be released. When the four-day truce ends, “the release of 10 additional hostages will result in a day of pause.” [humanitaria] additional,” the Israeli Government said in a statement in which it did not mention its concessions and insisted that “the war will continue to return all the hostages home, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threats to the State.” of Israel from Gaza.” According to Netanyahu, the pact also includes that the Red Cross can visit the rest of the hostages and give them medical care.
The Islamist movement has confirmed the agreement in a statement. It puts the release at 150 women and children (living mainly in the West Bank and East Jerusalem) and notes that it includes an Israeli commitment not to attack or arrest a single person anywhere in Gaza during the truce.
It also stipulates the entry into the Strip of hundreds of trucks with humanitarian aid, medicines and fuel. Israel maintains Gaza under a “complete blockade”: it only allows a tiny part of the necessary aid to enter from Egypt, and only for the southern part, where it has displaced the majority of the 1.1 million inhabitants of the north. Last week he gave the green light to the entry of two trucks of fuel per day to prevent the accumulation of wastewater (the system was stopped due to lack of fuel) from generating a pandemic that could also affect its soldiers, force the war to stop or I even ended up crossing into Israel.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
An official Israeli source cited by local media assures that the 50 hostages are Israelis and are alive: 30 minors, eight mothers and another 12 women. If Hamas releases more with other passports, it will be within the framework of an agreement with their countries. Before the war, Israel had about 5,300 Palestinian prisoners, but the wave of repression in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has raised their number to about 8,000, according to the calculations of the minister in charge of prisoners of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Qadura Fares.
Unpublished
Like many things since October 7, the agreement is unprecedented. Just as that day was the deadliest in Israel’s 75-year history (more than 1,200 dead) and the subsequent bombings in Gaza are unparalleled (Israel dropped as many bombs in the first days as the United States did in Afghanistan in a year and 69% of the dead are children and women), Israel has never received so many hostages. The price of releases is much lower than that of previous exchanges, with a ratio of one hostage for every three prisoners, when a thousand Palestinians were released from prison for a single soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2011. Among them, Yahia Sinwar , who would end up becoming the Hamas leader who masterminded the surprise attack.
Negotiated for weeks, the pact only depended in the end on the Israeli Government’s yes, as the spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Minister, Mayid Al-Ansari, made clear on Tuesday night. The Executive meeting lasted until dawn. “It is a difficult decision, but it is the right one,” Netanyahu defended before it began. The discredited prime minister has to navigate between accusations of inaction from the families of the hostages (who demand that their release be the highest priority) and the most nationalist and right wing of his Government, which does not want restrictions and demands forcefulness in Gaza, where bombings have killed more than 14,000 Palestinians and reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. While the Government debated, dozens of Israelis pressed for an agreement in front of the Armed Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, with banners such as: “Agreement now!” or “What is the price of my child?”
![March of relatives of hostages to ask for their release in Jerusalem, this Sunday.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/Y10tie9Boz3kSsKFAkxEVLv8ReQ=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/O7BBAC33ORFVLF5NEUTEIYCJDY.jpg)
Although the extreme right had announced its opposition and some ministers from Netanyahu’s party, Likud, had doubts, in the end only three of the 38 members of the Cabinet voted against: the ministers of Jewish Power, the formation of the head of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir. The pact does not need parliamentary endorsement, but, by law, if any of the released Palestinians have blood crimes, the relatives of their victims can appeal to the Supreme Court, which would delay the process for 24 hours.
One of the elements that extended the approval until three in the morning, local time, is the number of minors. Hamas argues that, in the current chaos of a Gaza invaded and divided in two, it does not have the capacity to know exactly where everyone is, nor to guarantee their surrender without a ceasefire, which opens the door to the release of the other 10 children. The majority of hostages are in the hands of Hamas, but the Islamic Jihad, other small armed groups, and even civilians, have dozens more.
The other thorny issue was the guarantees that Israel will continue to obtain intelligence information during the six hours a day during which, according to the agreement, drones will only be able to fly over the north of the Strip. Several ministers asked the security leadership, according to national public television. Hours before the pact was confirmed, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari clarified that it would not affect the objective of eliminating Hamas, politically and militarily. “We will know how to restore our operational achievements,” he noted.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Israel #Hamas #agree #exchange #hostages #prisoners #entry #humanitarian #aid #days #truce