Negotiators Reach Cease-Fire and Hostage Deal for Gaza

Negotiators announced on Wednesday that they had reached a cease-fire deal for the war in the Gaza Strip, 15 months after a devastating Hamas-led attack on Israeli soil set off a relentless military campaign with few parallels in recent history.

In the attack that set it all in motion, the Oct. 7, 2023, raid on southern Israel led by Hamas fighters, some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed, stunning Israelis. In the months that followed, an estimated 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them also civilians, were killed and entire towns leveled.

On Wednesday, Gazans were allowing themselves to hope for an end to the long months of hunger, destruction and fear, while Israelis were anxiously readying themselves to welcome home dozens of men and women taken hostage by Hamas during the 2023 attack.

Under the terms of the provisional deal, reached in the waning days of the Biden administration, the Israeli military will begin to pull back its force and Hamas will begin releasing some of the hostages seized during the bloody raid that set off the war. If approved by Israel’s cabinet, the cease-fire will take effect on Sunday.

“An entire country is holding its breath tonight,” said Yair Lapid, the centrist opposition leader of Israel, where the cabinet was expected to vote on the agreement on Thursday.

Hamas, in a statement, said, “It is a historic moment in the conflict with our enemy.” It praised the “legendary resilience” of Gazans in the face of a war that had unleashed a humanitarian crisis. One of the group’s leaders also had praise for the Hamas-led attack that prompted the war, despite the bitter price paid by Palestinians.

Even amid cautions that some of the details of the agreement had yet be worked out, celebrations broke out on Wednesday in both Gaza and Israel.

“Praise God, this tragedy is over,” said one Gaza City resident, Mohammad Fares, 24, as celebratory whistling and gunfire was heard in the background.

But in a decimated Gaza that little resembles the enclave that existed before Israel unleashed a broad assault aimed at destroying Hamas once and for all, grief and anxiety, not joy, remained the dominant emotions among Palestinians.

“How can we ever rebuild?” asked Suzanne Abu Daqqa, who lives in a suburb near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. “Where will we even begin?”

In Israel, families of the hostages issued a statement declaring their “overwhelming joy and relief” over the deal, but they also expressed “deep anxiety and concerns” that some hostages might be left behind. Of the roughly 250 people seized in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, some 100 are still in Gaza; about a third are believed to have died in captivity.

Even as the tentative cease-fire was celebrated, some appeared at pains not to overstate what might be achieved. In announcing the deal, the prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, spoke of “sustainable calm.”

The agreement, however, was a major breakthrough after months of roller-coaster talks that often appeared to inch close to resolution, only to fall apart. President Biden’s administration had been pressing for a truce as the clock ran out on his time in office.

“Too many innocent people have died, too many communities have been destroyed,” an ebullient Mr. Biden told reporters at a news conference.

His successor, President-elect Donald J. Trump, had threatened severe consequences unless Israel and Hamas reached an agreement before his Jan. 20 inauguration, and Mr. Biden suggested that the White House had consulted with the Trump team about the talks.

“We’re handing off to the next team a real opportunity for a brighter future in the Middle East,” he said. “I hope they take it.”

After months of deadlock, the negotiations moved into high gear in recent days in Doha, the Qatari capital, sped up by Mr. Trump’s looming inauguration. American officials from both the departing and incoming administrations drove the latest efforts to reach a deal, with Qatar and Egypt acting as mediators between Hamas and Israel.

The cease-fire would have several phases, the first of which would last six weeks. During that time, Mr. al-Thani said, Israeli forces in Gaza would withdraw to the east, away from populated areas, and some 33 hostages would be released. In return, Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel would be released.

The 33 hostages to be released in the first phase include women and children, men over age 50 and sick or wounded people. It was still unclear how many of that group are alive, but Israeli officials have estimated that most are.

During the first phase, 600 trucks carrying desperately needed humanitarian relief would enter Gaza daily. And Gazans forced from their homes would be able to return north, where the Israeli invasion began.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in southern Gaza have been living in tents, makeshift shelters, rented homes and relatives’ apartments for more than a year. Many of those planning to return to the north will most likely find that their homes and neighborhoods have been destroyed.

By Day 16, negotiations about the second phase of the deal — also lasting six weeks — would begin, focusing on further exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

The cease-fire agreement must still pass the Israeli cabinet, where some of the hard-right lawmakers that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu depends on to remain in power have openly opposed a deal.

Amid word that a cease-fire deal might be near, one far-right member of the coalition, Itamar Ben-Gvir, issued a video statement calling on others to join forces and scupper any agreement by quitting the Netanyahu government.

Another far-right cabinet member, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, called the agreement “bad and dangerous to Israel’s national security” and said he absolutely opposed it. But he did not explicitly threaten to leave the government.

Critics of Mr. Netanyahu, including many of the hostage families, have often accused him of sabotaging past efforts to reach a deal in order to preserve his coalition, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history.

On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he believed that a majority would sign off on an agreement in a cabinet vote. “Leadership is about deciding between a bad decision and a very bad decision,” Mr. Saar said, adding of the hostages, “If we postpone the decision, we don’t know how many of them will survive.”

Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, called on the government to approve the deal. “There is no greater moral, human, Jewish, or Israeli obligation than to bring our sons and daughters back to us — whether to recover at home, or to be laid to rest,” he said.

On Wednesday, in the absence of a cease-fire, Gaza Civil Defense reported continued Israeli airstrikes across the enclave, including one on a residential building in northern Gaza City that it said had resulted in two fatalities.

Over the past year, the fighting in Gaza, along with the lawlessness that spread after the invasion, have posed major hurdles to distributing aid. On Wednesday, as humanitarian groups geared up to flood into the stricken enclave, they made it clear that it would still not be easy — even with a cease-fire.

“This is a moment of hope and opportunity,” said Tom Fletcher, the United Nations undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs. “But we should be under no illusions how tough it will still be to get support to survivors.”

Reporting was contributed by Hiba Yazbek, Abu Bakr Bashir, Johnatan Reiss, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Ismaeel Naar and Ephrat Livni.