Israeli security cabinet approves Gaza ceasefire deal

FE Team | Published: January 17, 2025 21:09:27

JERUSALEM/CAIRO, Jan 17 (AFP/Reuters): Israel's security cabinet approved in a vote on Friday a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal that should take effect this weekend, the prime minister's office said.
The agreement, which must now go to the full cabinet for a final green light, would halt fighting and bombardment in Gaza's deadliest-ever war.
It would also launch on Sunday the release of hostages held in the territory since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Under the deal struck by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, the ensuing weeks should also see the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Israeli strikes have killed dozens of people since the deal was announced. Israel's military said on Thursday it had hit about 50 targets across Gaza over the past day.
The full cabinet will convene later Friday to approve the deal. The ceasefire would take effect on the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration as US president. Saying the proposed deal "supports achieving the objectives of the war", the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the security cabinet recommended that the government approve it.
His office had earlier said the release of hostages would begin on Sunday.
Even before the start of the truce, Gazans displaced by the war to other parts of the territory were preparing to return home.
"I will go to kiss my land," said Nasr al-Gharabli, who fled his home in Gaza City for a camp further south in the territory.
"If I die on my land, it would be better than being here as a displaced person."
In Israel, there was joy but also anguish over the 251 hostages taken in the deadliest attack in the country's history.
Kfir Bibas, whose second birthday falls on Saturday, is the youngest hostage. Hamas said in November 2023 that Kfir, his four-year-old brother Ariel and their mother Shiri had died in an air strike, but with the Israeli military yet to confirm their deaths, many are clinging to hope.
"I think of them, these two little redheads, and I get shivers," said 70-year-old Osnat Nyska, whose grandchildren attended nursery with the Bibas brothers.
Two far-right ministers had voiced opposition to the deal, with one threatening to quit the cabinet, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he believed the ceasefire would go ahead on schedule.
"I am confident, and I fully expect that implementation will begin, as we said, on Sunday," he said.
Gaza's civil defence agency said Israel pounded several areas of the territory, killing more than 100 people and wounding hundreds since the the deal was announced on Wednesday.
Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned that Israeli strikes were risking the lives of hostages due to be freed under the deal, and could turn their "freedom... into a tragedy".
The war began with the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Of the 251 people taken hostage, 94 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel's retaliatory campaign has destroyed much of Gaza, killing 46,788 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian’s Hamas is expected to release the first hostages under a Gaza ceasefire deal tomorrow (Sunday), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Friday, after 15 months of war that demolished the enclave.
If successful, the ceasefire would halt fighting between Hamas and Israeli forces that has razed much of heavily urbanised Gaza, killed more than 46,000 people, and displaced most of the enclave's pre-war population of 2.3 million several times over, according to local authorities.
It could also ease hostilities in the Middle East, where the Gaza war spread to include Iran and its proxies - Lebanon's Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthis and armed groups in Iraq as well as the occupied West Bank.
In Gaza itself on Friday, Israeli warplanes kept up heavy strikes, and the Civil Emergency Service said that at least 101 Palestinians, including 58 women and children, had been killed since the deal was announced on Wednesday. Under the six-week first phase of the three-stage deal, Hamas will release 33 Israeli hostages, including all women (soldiers and civilians), children, and men over 50.