Gaza:

The Israeli government and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to release 50 Gaza detainees in exchange for 150 Palestinians held in Israel and to halt fighting for four days to allow humanitarian aid to enter the besieged area.

Qatari officials, who are brokering the secret talks, as well as the US, Israel and Hamas have been saying for days that a deal was imminent.

Hamas is believed to be holding more than 200 people who were captured when its fighters attacked Israel on October 7.

A statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the 50 women and children would be released within four days, with fighting halted during this time.

Smoke rising after Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, as seen from southern Israel. Photo: AFP

Without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange, it said that for every additional 10 detainees released, the pause would be extended by another day.

“The Government of Israel is committed to returning all hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first step in achieving this goal,” the statement said after hours of deliberations.

Hamas said that 50 detainees would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons. The Palestinian group said in a statement that the ceasefire agreement would allow hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza.

It said Israel has committed not to attack or arrest anyone in all parts of Gaza during the ceasefire period.

US President Joe Biden said that he welcomes the agreement. “Today’s agreement must bring additional American hostages home and I will not stop until they are all released,” he said in a statement.

The Qatari government said that 50 civilian hostage women and children would be released from Gaza in exchange for “the release of a number of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons”.

The starting time of the ceasefire will be announced within the next 24 hours, a statement said.

According to Gaza officials, the agreement is the first ceasefire in a conflict in which brutal Israeli bombardment has devastated large parts of Gaza, killing 13,300 civilians in the small densely populated enclave and displacing nearly 2.3 million people. Two-thirds of the people have become homeless.

But Netanyahu said Israel’s broader mission remains unchanged.

“We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure That no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel.” meeting.

Hamas said in its statement: “As we announce a ceasefire agreement, we reaffirm that our fingers will remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will look forward to defending our people and defeating the occupation.”

Release will start from Thursday

A senior US official said the hostages expected to be released include three Americans, including a three-year-old girl.

The Israeli government has said that in addition to Israeli citizens, more than half of the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship of about 40 countries, including the US, Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal.

Israeli media said the first release of hostages was expected on Thursday. The report said that for the agreement to be implemented Israeli citizens would have to wait 24 hours for the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Camelia Hotter Ishay, the grandmother of 13-year-old Gali Tarshansky, who is believed to be being held in Gaza, said she would not receive news of any deal until she received a call that the teenager had been released. But you won’t believe it.

“And then I’ll know it’s really over and I can breathe a sigh of relief and say that’s it, it’s over,” she said.

Kadura Fares, head of the Prisoner Affairs Commission in the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, told Reuters that about 85 were women and 350 were minors among the more than 7,800 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Most were detained without charges or for incidents such as throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, not for launching terrorist attacks, he said.

Qatar’s chief negotiator in the ceasefire talks, Mohammed al-Khulaifi, minister of state at the Foreign Ministry, told Reuters the International Committee of the Red Cross would work inside Gaza to facilitate the release of the hostages.

He said the ceasefire meant “there will be no attacks. No military activity, no escalation, no anything.”

Al-Khulaifi said Qatar hoped the agreement would be “the seed of a larger agreement and a permanent cessation of firing. And that is our intention.”

Hamas has so far released only four detainees: US citizen Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on October 20, citing “humanitarian reasons”, and Israeli woman Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, to. 23 October.

Palestinians gather near damaged vehicles after an Israeli attack on an apartment in a residential building in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza. Photo: AFP

The armed wing of the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad, which took part in the October 7 attack along with Hamas, said late Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it held following the October 7 attacks on Israel has died. Has been.

“We had previously expressed our desire to release him for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was hindering this and this led to his death,” the Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel.

As attention focused on the hostage release agreement, fighting on the ground intensified. Munir al-Barsh, director general of Gaza’s health ministry, told Al Jazeera TV that Israeli forces have ordered the evacuation of the Indonesian hospital in Gaza City. Israel claimed the fighters were operating out of convenience and threatened to take action against them within four hours, he said.

On Tuesday, Israel also said its forces had surrounded the Jabaliya refugee camp, a crowded urban extension of Gaza City where Hamas is battling advancing Israeli armored forces.

Palestinian news agency WAFA said Israeli airstrikes on part of Jabaliya killed 33 people and injured dozens.

In southern Gaza, media said 10 people were killed and 22 injured in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the town of Khan Younis.