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Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire and hostage release deal, with President-elect Trump publicly celebrating the news shortly after midday on Wednesday.
The Biden administration had not made an announcement as of midday Wednesday. An Israeli official confirmed to The Hill on Wednesday that an agreement has been reached and predicted it will move quickly through a formal approval process.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said later Wednesday that some details were still being worked out, adding that the deal was expected to be “finalized tonight.”
The deal would open the door to a possible end to more than a year of fighting since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war against the US-designated terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli war cabinet will have to vote to accept the terms of the deal, after which a second vote will be held before Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. If the deal passes both votes, there will also be time to appeal the deal to the Supreme Court.
An Israeli official told The Hill that the process should now move quickly and that the ceasefire could begin as early as Friday.
President-elect Trump reacted on his social media site Truth Social: “WE HAVE A DEAL FOR THE HOSTAGES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THEY WILL BE RELEASED SHORTLY. THANK YOU!”
Trump had warned that “all hell” would break loose in the Middle East if Hamas did not release hostages before he was sworn in on January 20, and his special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, worked closely with President Biden’s negotiators to reach a deal conclusion.
Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pointed to reports of a deal during the confirmation hearing of Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio ( R-Fla.).
“Before we all celebrate, obviously we all want to see how it plays out,” Risch said.
Rubio, addressing the possibility of a ceasefire during his hearing, credited both Biden’s team and Trump’s transition team for working side by side.
Asked if he supported a Palestinian state, the ultimate goal of the Biden administration’s diplomatic efforts in the region, Rubio would not commit.
“Part of this (ceasefire) agreement has this very tenuous but important six-week period, (for the transition) to a civilian administration, which could serve as a base to build on. We don’t know yet,” he said. said Rubio.
The contours of the agreement are described as largely in line with President Biden’s May proposal, which was approved by the United Nations Security Council in June. That agreement called for a phased ceasefire agreement, with a first phase that would allow the release of some hostages held by Hamas, the expansion of humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip and the release of prisoners Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
According to reports, Hamas is ready to release 33 hostages in the first phase of the deal: children, women, soldiers, the elderly and the sick. Israeli officials he told the Times of Israel that most of the 33 are alive, but some are dead.
If the first phase of the deal goes through, on the 16th, Israel will begin negotiations in a second stage to release the remaining captives — male soldiers and men of military age — and the bodies of the slain hostages, the officials said. Israelis time
Hamas is believed to have 94 hostages kidnapped from southern Israel during the October 7 attack, out of the 250 abducted initially. About 100 people were released during a week-long ceasefire in late November 2023. The Israeli military confirmed that it knows 34 of the hostages have died.
Israel is expected to retain significant “assets”, including high-profile Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism and territory in the Gaza Strip, to use as leverage in a second stage of negotiations to ensure that all hostages to be released, the Times reported. .
Israel will also begin withdrawing its military from the Gaza Strip. There had been some previous friction between Israel and Hamas over the group’s demand that Israel withdraw from the Philadelphia Corridor, a narrow strip on Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Neyanyahu’s office said that because of his insistence, “Hamas folded its last-minute demand to change the deployment of IDF forces in the Philadelphia Corridor.”
During the hostage release period, humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip are expected to increase to around 600 trucks per day.
Israel has faced strong criticism for limiting the distribution of humanitarian aid and not guaranteeing safe routes for delivery. Israeli officials argue that it has facilitated the entry of hundreds of aid trucks into the Gaza Strip and coordinated the pickups with humanitarian groups.
Updated at 1:25 PM EST
