Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce in Gaza today to rescue the last captives who are still alive. This is a big step toward ending a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and caused a humanitarian disaster.
The deal, which comes after US President Donald Trump released a 20-point peace plan for Gaza last month, is set to be signed today in Egypt. It says that Israel must free hundreds of Palestinian inmates, according to AFP.
After more than two years of war that started with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel in October 2023, there will be a lot of help going into Gaza because of the deal.
As part of the accord, the Israeli army claimed it was getting ready to pull out troops in Gaza.
Later on, Trump’s proposal also calls for Hamas to give up its weapons and for a transitional authority led by the US president to take over Gaza. However, this point has not yet been addressed.
A source inside Hamas told our reporter that the group will trade 20 living hostages for about 2,000 Palestinian detainees as part of the pact’s first phase. The swap will happen within 72 hours of the deal being put into effect.
The source claimed that the date of the implementation would be disclosed today. Trump said he thought all the captives would “all be coming back on Monday.”
“Tears of Joy”
The news made people in Gaza very happy. Most of the area has been decimated by bombing, and most of the people who live there have had to move at least once in the last two years.
“Honestly, I couldn’t help it when I heard the news. There were tears of delight. “Two years of bombing, terror, destruction, loss, humiliation, and the constant feeling that we could die at any moment,” said Samer Joudeh, a displaced Palestinian.
“Now we finally feel like we can take a break.”
Our video shows that in Khan Yunis, which is in the south of the Gaza Strip, young people sang, danced, and cheered.
People are working out the details of the transaction in secret talks in a conference center in Sharm El-Sheikh, an Egyptian vacation town on the Red Sea.
There wasn’t any of the pomp that came with conversations about prior deals made in Egypt. This could mean that the core problems in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict aren’t being dealt with.
Qatar called the accord the “first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement,” which will halt the fighting, free Israeli and Palestinian captives, and let supplies into the country.
A Hamas source said that the prisoners would be freed in exchange for 250 Palestinians who have been condemned to life in prison and 1,700 others who have been imprisoned by Israel since the war started.
“With God’s Help”
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, claimed he would send the captives home “with God’s help.” An official source also said that the prime minister’s cabinet would convene today to accept the arrangement.
Trump indicated earlier that he would go to the Middle East this week because a deal was “very close.”
After our reporters observed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stop an engagement at the White House yesterday to give Trump an urgent letter on how the negotiations in Egypt were going, things moved quickly.
Trump stated, “I might go there sometime toward the end of the week, maybe on Sunday.” He also claimed he was “most likely” to go to Egypt but would also think about going to Gaza.
Hamas has sent a list of Palestinian inmates it wants to be freed from Israeli jails during the first phase of the cease-fire.
Hamas must release the other 47 hostages, both living and dead, who were taken in October 2023 in exchange.
According to an AFP count based on official Israeli numbers, the negotiations were taking place in Egypt on the second anniversary of the Hamas attack, which killed 1,219 people, most of whom were civilians.
Militants also took 251 individuals hostage in Gaza, where 47 are still there, including 25 who the Israeli military claims are dead.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says that Israel’s retaliation campaign has killed at least 67,183 people. The UN believes these numbers to be true.
The information doesn’t say if the dead are civilians or soldiers, but it does say that more than half of them are women and children.
After the pact was made public, Gaza’s civil defense service, which is a rescue group that works for Hamas, said that there had been many strikes on the enclave.
Prisoners and protests
There is more and more pressure around the world to end the conflict. There is a famine in Gaza that the UN has proclaimed, and families of Israeli hostages are missing their loved ones.
In the past several weeks, there have been protests in many nations throughout the world. Last month, a UN investigation accused Israel of genocide, which the government called “distorted and false.”
People have also said that Hamas has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The names of the Palestinian prisoners that Hamas wanted were very important to the talks.
Egyptian state-linked media say that the organization wanted to see high-profile prisoner Marwan Barghouti, who is from Hamas’s rival Fatah faction, released.
Hamas’s main negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, reportedly stressed that the party wanted “guarantees from President Trump and the countries that support him that the war will end once and for all.”
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