By Andrew Mills, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell
This picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows smoke plumes rising from explosions above destroyed buildings in the northern Gaza Strip on January 13, 2025. Photo: AFP / Menahem Kahana
Negotiators reached a deal on Wednesday for a ceasefire in the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, an official briefed on the negotiations told Reuters, after 15 months of conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and inflamed the Middle East.
The deal, not yet formally announced, outlines a six-week initial ceasefire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian detainees held by Israel, an official briefed on the negotiations told Reuters.
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 19 January.
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.
"I am happy, yes, I am crying, but those are tears of joy," said Ghada, a displaced mother of five.
"We are being reborn. With every hour of delay Israel conducted a new massacre. I hope it is all over now."
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 Oct. 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, told Reuters 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 United Nations.
The pact follows months of tortuous, on-off negotiations conducted by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with the backing of the United States, and comes just ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump sees regional peace momentum from deal
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 repeatedly threatened there would be "hell to pay" if hostages were not released ahead of his 20 January inauguration, said he was "thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home".
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.
Massive task of reconstruction
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 back to Israel overnight to take part in security cabinet and government votes on the deal - meaning the votes would likely be by or on Thursday.
Israeli troops invaded Gaza after Hamas-led gunmen broke through security barriers and burst into Israeli communities on 7 October, 2023, killing 1200 soldiers and civilians and abducting more than 250 foreign and Israeli hostages.
Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed more than 46,000 people, according to Gaza health ministry figures, and left the coastal enclave a wasteland of rubble with hundreds of thousands surviving 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 8 December 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 US President Joe 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."
- Reuters
