The Palestinian
group Hamas has agreed to a ceasefire deal with Israel after more than 460 days
of a war that has devastated Gaza.
Israel has
killed more than 46,000 Palestinians since its war on the enclave began in
October 2023. It has yet to officially respond to the deal, but a government
vote is expected on Thursday, and US President-elect Donald Trump has announced
that a deal has been agreed upon.
The reported
deal includes a temporary ceasefire that will, for now, bring to an end the
destruction visited upon Gaza, as well as the release of captives held in Gaza
and many of the prisoners held by Israel. The deal will also, finally, allow
displaced Palestinians to return to their homes – though after Israel’s
deliberate destruction campaign, many homes no longer remain.
The text of the
deal has not been officially released yet, but this is what we know so far,
based on reports from Al Jazeera Arabic and the Reuters and Associated Press
news agencies.
The first phase
The initial
phase will last six weeks, and will involve a limited prisoner exchange, the
partial withdrawal of Israeli troops in Gaza and a surge of aid into the
enclave.
Thirty-three
Israeli captives, including women, children and civilians over the age of 50 –
taken during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 – will
be released. In exchange, Israel will release about 2000 Palestinian prisoners
during this phase, including 250 prisoners serving life sentences. Among the
Palestinians being released are around 1000 who were detained after October 7.
In tandem with
the exchange of captives, Israel will withdraw its forces from Gaza’s
population centres to areas no more than 700 metres inside Gaza’s border with
Israel. However, that may exclude the Netzarim Corridor, the militarised belt
bisecting the Strip and controlling movement along it – the withdrawal from
Netzarim is expected instead to take place in stages.
Israel will
allow civilians to return to their homes in the enclave’s besieged north, where
aid agencies warn famine may have taken hold, and allow a surge of aid into the
enclave – up to 600 trucks per day.
Israel will also
allow wounded Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment, and open the
Rafah crossing with Egypt seven days after the start of the implementation of
the first phase.
Israeli forces
will reduce their presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, the border area between
Egypt and Gaza, and then withdraw completely in later stages.
What happens
after the first phase?
Details of the
second and third phases, though understood to be agreed to in principle, are to
be negotiated during the first phase.
Critically,
Israel has insisted that no written guarantees be given to rule out a
resumption of its attacks once the first phase is complete and its civilian
captives returned.
However,
according to an Egyptian source cited by the Associated Press news agency, the
three mediators involved in the talks – Egypt, Qatar and the United States –
have given Hamas verbal guarantees that negotiations will continue and that all
three would press for a deal that would see the second and third stages
implemented before an initial six-week window has elapsed.
What is planned
for the second phase?
If Israel
determines that the conditions have been met for a second phase, Hamas will
release all the remaining living captives, mostly male soldiers, in return for
the freeing of more Palestinians held in the Israeli prison system. In
addition, according to the current document, Israel would initiate its
“complete withdrawal” from Gaza.
However, these
conditions, which have yet to be voted upon by the Israeli cabinet, are at odds
with the stated positions of many of the far-right wing members of Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu’s cabinet, which he relies upon for support,
as well as Netanyahu’s own past positions, in which he has repeatedly used the
presence of Hamas in Gaza to prolong the conflict.
The third phase
The details of a
third phase remain unclear.
According to the
draft, should the conditions of the second stage be met, the third will see the
bodies of the remaining captives handed over in return for a three- to
five-year reconstruction plan to be conducted under international supervision.
There is
currently no agreement over who will administer Gaza beyond the ceasefire. The
United States has pressed for a reformed version of the Palestinian Authority
to do so.
US Secretary of
State Antony Blinken on Tuesday said the post-war reconstruction and governance
envisions the Palestinian Authority inviting “international partners” to stand
up an interim governing authority to run critical services and oversee the territory.
Other partners,
notably Arab states, would provide forces to ensure security in the short term,
he said in a speech at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.
For such a plan
to work, it would need the support of Arab states, including Saudi Arabia,
which have said they would only support the scheme if there is a pathway to
Palestinian statehood. This provides another point of contention for Israeli
lawmakers, despite Israel having agreed to a two-state solution in the Oslo
Accords of the 1990s.
Israel has yet
to suggest an alternative form of governance in Gaza.
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