Israel and Hamas sign Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal after mediators iron out final kinks
Full cabinet expected to approve deal on Saturday, implementation set for Sunday; Netanyahu’s coalition faces upheaval over agreement
Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams signed a Gaza hostage release and ceasefire deal in Doha early Friday, after the final hurdles stalling finalization of the agreement were cleared.
Confirming the deal was completed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the security cabinet would convene on Friday to vote on it, before the full cabinet was expected to follow suit on Saturday night.
Though this was initially expected to push off the scheduled release of the first group of hostages from Sunday until Monday, officials said on Friday the ceasefire and release would start Sunday as planned.
Israel says 98 hostages are currently held in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 36 confirmed dead by the IDF. The agreed-upon first phase of the deal will see Hamas release 33 “humanitarian” hostages over 42 days — children, women, female soldiers, the elderly and the sick. Israel believes most of the 33 are alive but that some are dead. Jerusalem has not yet received word on each hostage’s status.
As the first phase progresses, the sides will hold talks on a potential second phase, which would see the release of all remaining hostages in return for a permanent ceasefire.
Both the US and Qatar — who mediated the negotiations — announced Wednesday that an agreement had been reached to end the 15-month war in Gaza triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, but Netanyahu had held off on publicly commenting, saying he would only do so when the terms were finalized.
Jerusalem was initially slated to approve the deal Thursday morning, but the cabinet meetings were delayed as Netanyahu’s office said details remained to be finalized in Qatar, and that Hamas was throwing last-minute wrenches into the negotiations.
While American officials acknowledged last-minute snags, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel that a key reason the premier delayed the vote was a scramble to keep his coalition intact. The official, who is not from the Prime Minister’s Office, said details were indeed still being finalized in negotiations at the time, but insisted those disagreements were relatively minor, and chalked up the delay to “coalition politics.”
Threats and delays
Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partner National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir vowed Thursday to quit the government if the deal is approved, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is said to be weighing a similar move.
Explaining the initial plan to push off implementation of the deal from Sunday to Monday, a Netanyahu spokesperson said opponents of the deal must be given at least 24 hours to petition the High Court — which is not expected to intervene — and a Sunday start would not provide enough time to do so for those who are religious and observe Shabbat.
Critics of the move noted the religious principle of allowing the violation of Shabbat to save lives.
However, on Friday noon officials said the appeal period would be shortened to only a few hours, allowing the deal to be implemented starting Sunday as planned.
A senior Biden administration official downplayed talk of delays Thursday.
“We consider the hostage deal done and agreed, and are now simply awaiting Israel’s formal approval procedures which begin tomorrow [Friday],” the official told The Times of Israel.
A source familiar with the matter said the Biden administration wants the deal authorized as quickly as possible and believes that Netanyahu has the votes for the hostage deal to pass both the security cabinet and full cabinet votes over the weekend.
Any opposition from Netanyahu’s far-right allies is not expected to affect the outcome of the votes.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum also called on the government to swiftly approve the agreement, after reports of a delayed cabinet vote.
“For the 98 hostages, every night is another night of a terrible nightmare. Do not delay their return even for one more night,” the forum said in a statement. “We call on the decision-makers — put other matters aside, bring them all back with the requisite urgency.”
The father of Liri Albag, an IDF surveillance soldier taken captive on October 7, wrote a letter to Netanyahu and government ministers that similarly warned that “a further delay in approving the deal means another unnecessary day that our daughters are imprisoned in hell.”
Channel 12 also reported that Netanyahu and Smotrich met Thursday evening for the sixth time in two days, as the premier seeks to persuade the finance minister’s Religious Zionism party not to quit the government over the deal.
The unsourced report said the government may pass a separate decision to placate Smotrich, stating that the war against Hamas will not end before the terror group’s military and governing capabilities are destroyed. This decision would also define a new war goal — destroying terror in the West Bank.
‘We gotta get them out’
US President-elect Donald Trump declared Thursday that he wants the agreement finalized before his Monday inauguration, while stressing that his involvement was crucial for the negotiation.
“If we weren’t involved in this deal, the deal would have never happened,” he said in a podcast interview with Dan Bongino. “We changed the course of it, and we changed it fast, and frankly, it better be done before I take the oath of office… We shook hands and we signed certain documents, but it better be done.”
????PRESIDENT TRUMP LIVE ON THE DAN BONGINO SHOW????
“ THERE WOULD BE NO HOSTAGE DEAL WITHOUT US.. And it BETTER BE DONE BY THE TIME I TAKE THE OATH” pic.twitter.com/NUvf0Jw3bU— Johnny St.Pete (@JohnMcCloy) January 16, 2025
Trump likened the situation to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, which was resolved moments after Ronald Raegan entered office replacing Jimmy Carter.
“For three years, they’ve lived like in hell,” Trump said of the hostages. (They have been in captivity for 15 months). “We gotta get them out, and it’ll be great when we do.”
According to a leaked copy of the agreement, over 1,700 Palestinian prisoners are to be freed in return for 33 Israeli hostages in the first phase of the deal: 700 terrorists, 250-300 of whom are serving life terms; 1,000 Gazans captured since October 8 in fighting in the Strip; and 47 rearrested prisoners from the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal.
A delegation of senior Israeli defense officials was set to head to Egypt’s capital Cairo on Friday to coordinate matters relating to the ceasefire and hostage deal, according to Hebrew media outlets.
The Walla news site and Army Radio reported that the delegation will include senior Shin Bet officials, the head of the IDF Strategy Directorate Maj. Gen. Eliezer Toledano, and Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, head of COGAT, the Defense Ministry body in charge of coordination with Palestinians.
The meetings will focus on coordinating the process of releasing the hostages on the first day of the ceasefire, the report said. In the previous ceasefire deal, the hostages were released via the Rafah Crossing to Egypt and then to Israel.
The report also said the delegation will discuss with Egyptian officials the reopening of the Rafah Crossing for Palestinians to leave Gaza, the entry of aid to the Strip, and the IDF’s deployment and expected withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor, the Egypt-Gaza border area.
The war began when Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing over 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages during their October 7, 2023, onslaught. During the November 2023 temporary truce, 105 hostages were released, while four were freed earlier and eight have been rescued alive by troops from Gaza.
Agencies contributed to this report.
