- Captives to be released over four days, every additional 10 captives will increase truce duration by a day
- Three Americans, including a 3-year-old girl, are expected to be among hostages to be released on Thursday, a senior US official said
GAZA: Israel’s government and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of 50 captives held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.
Officials from Qatar, which has been mediating secret negotiations, as well as the US, Israel and Hamas have for days been saying a deal was imminent.
Hamas is believed to be holding more than 200 captives, taken when its fighters surged into Israel on Oct 7.
A statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said 50 women and children will be released over four days, during which there will be a pause in fighting.
For every additional 10 captives released, the pause would be extended by another day, it said, without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange.
“Israel’s government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal,” said the statement, released after hours of deliberation that were closed to the press.
Hamas said the 50 captives would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children who are held in Israeli jails. The truce deal will also allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza, the Palestinian group said in a statement.
Israel had committed not to attack or arrest anyone in all parts of Gaza during the truce period, it added.
US President Joe Biden said he welcomed the deal. “Today’s deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released,” he said in a statement.
The Qatar government said 50 civilian women and children hostages 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 truce would be announced within the next 24 hours, it said in a statement.
The accord is the first truce of a conflict in which brutal Israeli bombardments have flattened swathes of Gaza, killed 13,300 civilians in the tiny densely populated enclave and left about two-thirds of its 2.3 million people homeless, according to authorities in Gaza.
But Netanyahu said Israel’s broader mission was 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,” he said in a recorded message at the start of the government meeting.
Hamas said in its statement: “As we announce the striking of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will remain on the look out to defend our people and defeat the occupation.”
Release to begin on Thursday
Three Americans, including a 3-year-old girl, are expected to be among the hostages to be released, a senior US official said.
In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the US, Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, Israel’s government has said.
Israeli media said the first release of hostages was expected on Thursday. Implementing the deal must wait for 24 hours to give Israeli citizens the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners, reports said.
Kamelia Hoter Ishay, the grandmother of 13-year-old Gali Tarshansky, who is believed to be held in Gaza, said she would not believe reports of a deal until she got a call that the teenager was freed.
“And then I’ll know that it’s really over and I can breathe a sigh of relief and say that’s it, it’s over,” she said.
Qadura Fares, head of the Commission for Prisoners’ Affairs in the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, told Reuters that among more than 7,800 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel were about 85 women and 350 minors. Most were detained without charges or for incidents such as hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers, not for launching militant attacks, he said.
Qatar’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be working inside Gaza to facilitate the hostages’ release.
He said that the truce meant there would be “no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing.”
Al-Khulaifi added that Qatar hopes the deal “will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire. And that’s our intention.”
Hamas has to date released only four captives: US citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on Oct 20, citing “humanitarian reasons,” and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on Oct 23.
The armed wing of the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct 7 raid with Hamas, said late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it has held since the Oct 7 attacks on Israel had died.
“We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death,” Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel.
As attention focused on the hostage release deal, fighting on the ground raged on. Mounir Al-Barsh, director-general of Gaza’s health ministry, told Al Jazeera TV that the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City. Israel claimed fighters were operating from the facility and threatened to act against them within four hours, he said.
On Tuesday, Israel also said its forces had encircled the Jabalia refugee camp, a congested urban extension of Gaza City where Hamas has been battling advancing Israeli armoured forces.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said 33 people were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli air strike on part of Jabalia.
In southern Gaza, media said 10 people were killed and 22 injured by an Israeli air strike on an apartment in the city of Khan Younis.
Dispute erupts over whether pope called Gaza situation a ‘genocide’
A messy dispute has broken out over whether Pope Francis used the word “genocide” to describe events in Gaza, with Palestinians who met with him insisting that he did and the Vatican saying he did not, Reuters reports.
The opposing versions emerged at an afternoon press conference with 10 Palestinians who met the pope in the morning at his Vatican residence. That meeting followed a separate one with Israeli relatives of hostages in Gaza.
“When we shared the stories of the families that have been killed [in Gaza] he mentioned ‘I see the genocide’,” said Shireen Awwad Hilal, who teaches at the Bethlehem Bible College.
“It was very clear, the word genocide did not come from us. It came from His Holiness, Pope Francis,” she said.
But a statement sent by Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, in response to a question texted by a reporter, said the opposite.
“I am not aware that he (the pope) used such a word. He used terms that he expressed during the general audience and words that in any case represent the terrible situation that is being lived out in Gaza,” Bruni’s statement said.
Other participants at the Palestinian news conference concurred that they had heard the pope use the word genocide.
Unicef says Gaza world’s ‘most dangerous place’ for children
The head of the United Nations children’s agency has called the besieged Gaza Strip “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child,” and said that the hard-won truce deal between Israel and Hamas was not enough to save their lives, AFP reports.
Unicef’s executive director Catherine Russell told the UN Security Council that over 5,300 children have reportedly been killed in Gaza since Israel began bombarding the strip following Hamas’ Oct 7 attack, accounting for 40 percent of the deaths.
“This is unprecedented,” said Russell, who had just returned from a trip to southern Gaza. “I am haunted by what I saw and heard.”
Russell welcomed a deal reached by Israel and Hamas to free hostages and pause ferocious fighting and bombardment in Gaza.
Boycott campaigns over Gaza bombardment hit Western brands in some Arab countries
Midway through a recent evening in Cairo, a worker cleaned tables in an empty McDonald’s restaurant. Branches of other Western fast-food chains in the Egyptian capital also appeared deserted.
All have been hit by a boycott campaign over Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas attack in southern Israel on Oct 7, Reuters reports.
Western brands are feeling the impact in Egypt and Jordan, and there are signs the campaign is spreading in some other Arab countries including Kuwait and Morocco.
Some of the companies the campaign is directed at are perceived to have taken pro-Israeli stances, and some are alleged to have financial ties to Israel or investments there. As the campaign has started to spread, boycott calls circulated on social media have expanded to list dozens of companies and products, prompting shoppers to shift to local alternatives.
Major NGOs call for longer Israel-Hamas truce
Humanitarian and human rights organisations have said a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas is too short and have called for more time to deliver vital aid to the Gaza Strip, AFP reports.
On a conference call of major NGOs, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, Paul O’Brien, said the lull was “not enough and it’s certainly not enough in human rights terms”.
Jason Lee, Save the Children director for the Palestinian Territories, said while the truce was “a welcome step in the right direction, it cannot replace a ceasefire”.
“There must be a ceasefire from an operational perspective and from a safety perspective,” he added.
The executive director of medical charity Medecins du Monde, Joel Weiler, said the truce could bring some respite.
“We may be able to bring drugs, fuel, but we will not be able to manage it correctly and to reach people that are in need,” he added.
Danila Zizi, Handicap International director for the Palestinian Territories, agreed, calling temporary lulls in the fighting “nowhere near enough to reach the population in need”.
“In four hours or four days, we cannot deliver food to two million people, care to 2m people,” she said.
Pope urges dialogue to avoid ‘mountain of dead’ in Mideast
Pope Francis has prayed for peace in the Middle East in a video message and called for dialogue to avoid “a mountain of dead”, AFP reports.
“Let us pray for peace in the Holy Land. Let us pray that the difficulties resolve themselves in dialogue and negotiation and not with a mountain of dead on each side,” said the 86-year-old pope.
The Palestinian people and the people of Israel have the right to live in peace: two fraternal peoples. Let us #PrayTogether for peace in the Holy Land, so that disputes may be resolved through dialogue and negotiations, and not with a mountain of dead on each side.… pic.twitter.com/nD2p0h8CU3
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) November 22, 2023
South Africa hopes Gaza truce bolsters efforts to ‘end conflict’
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has welcomed an agreement for a four-day truce in Gaza and said he hoped the deal between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas would bolster efforts to achieve an outright end to the conflict, Reuters reports.
Ramaphosa has been one of the most prominent voices on the African continent following Israel’s bombardment of Gaza after the October 7 attack by Hamas.
South Africa’s strong support for Palestinians dates back to former President Nelson Mandela’s days, with the country likening their plight to its own before the end of apartheid in 1994. Israel rejects the comparison.
“It is my hope that the achievement of this pause will strengthen efforts to achieve an outright end to the current conflict,” Ramaphosa said in a statement. He said there needed to be a durable political resolution in the Middle East.
US opposes displacement of Gazans to another country: US envoy
United States Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues David Satterfield has said the country is against the displacement of Palestinians from the battered Gaza Strip to another country, Reuters reports.
Satterfield told Lebanese broadcaster al-Jadeed that Gazans displaced to the strip’s south by Israel’s military operations “must be allowed to return to homes in the north as soon as possible”.
He said the US “wants to see Israel succeed in its campaign” and warned Hezbollah to halt missile fire on Israel if it wanted to avoid an escalation.
Swiss govt to propose legislation to ban Hamas
The Swiss government said it has decided to propose a ban on the Palestinian group Hamas, Reuters reports.
A ban on Hamas is “the most appropriate response to the situation that has prevailed in the Middle East since 7 October,” when the group launched an attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, said the government in a statement
More than 50 from same family killed in north Gaza: Palestinian minister
More than 50 members of the same family have been killed in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza during Israel’s military campaign, the Palestinian foreign minister said, Reuters reports.
“Only this morning, from the Qadoura family in Jabalia, 52 people have been wiped out completely, killed,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said on the sidelines of a briefing by Arab and Muslim foreign ministers in London.
“I have the list of the names, 52 of them, they were wiped out completely from grandfather to grandchildren.”
Israeli-Palestinian peace camp shaken but determined
The Israel-Palestinian peace camp has long promoted dialogue against hatred and bloodshed but the passions inflamed by the deadliest Gaza fighting yet pose entirely new challenges for the movement.
Many of its activists believe that talking to each other is now more important than ever, at a time when the fighting rages unabated and both sides mourn their dead.
“It wasn’t easy before the war,” said Sulaiman Khatib of Combatants for Peace, a group he co-founded in 2006 and whose Israeli and Palestinian members hold weekly meetings and frequent protests.
“But now it’s even more difficult, starting with the relationship with each of the societies, both in Israel and in Palestine, where the extremes have risen.”
