Details are still missing, but it is expected to come into force on Sunday (19)
IGOR GIELOW
SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS) – After 467 days of war, the Israeli government and the Palestinian group Hamas agreed on this Wednesday (15) the terms of an initial six-week ceasefire, paving the way to end the longest-running of the great conflicts between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors in almost 77 years of common modern history.
The announcement, made by negotiators and billed in advance by US President-elect Donald Trump, was confirmed by Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed al-Thani. Details are still missing, as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had said, but it is expected to come into force on Sunday (19).
At the same time, the President of the USA until Monday (20), Joe Biden, released a statement. “This agreement will stop the fighting in Gaza, increase much-needed humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians and reunite the hostages with their families,” he said.
According to negotiators, a staggered exchange of the remaining 98 hostages since Hamas terrorists carried out the mega-attack on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war, was arranged for around 1,000 of the 12,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. It is estimated that perhaps 60 of the hostages may be alive.
Al-Thani, who is also chancellor of the country where the local government and the United States had been working since the end of last year, celebrated the agreement. Part of the discussions also took place in Cairo, with the mediation of Egypt, which borders the Gaza Strip to the west, territory that has been controlled by Hamas since 2007.
The deal must be approved by Israel’s 11-member security cabinet. There must be resistance from the religious ultra-right – whose 2 representatives on the collegiate criticize the arrangement and threaten to open a parliamentary crisis for Netanyahu.
Trump didn’t wait for the Qatari, going to the social network Truth Social almost two hours before the formal announcement, made in Doha just before 10pm (4pm in Brasília): “We have a deal for the hostages in the Middle East. They will be released soon,” he said, taking credit for himself.
The initial exchange will include 33 Israeli hostages, a group of sick people, children, women and men over the age of 50, being released alongside an unknown number of Palestinians. In 16 days, a second phase will begin, and it remains to be seen whether ten names considered too sensitive on the Arab side, such as leader Marwan Barghouti, will be included.
Netanyahu met with family members of those kidnapped the day before to explain the plan and heard concerns about the release in stages. In the third phase, bodies of the dead will be exchanged.
Those detained by Israel on October 7 will not be released, and released accused of murder will not be able to go to the West Bank, the area under control of the Palestinian National Authority. According to the US plan, the body will be reformed, unifying rival factions to also govern Gaza — but this will depend on Trump’s approval.
Tel Aviv forces will only leave Gaza later, but will allow Palestinians to return to their homes in the exclusion region outlined today in the north of the strip. There are provisions for them to maintain the perimeter of the fenced territory.
TRUMP ENVOY PRESSURED ISRAEL
The talks were attended by the heads of Israeli intelligence, David Barnea and Ronen Bar, the Qatari prime minister, the American negotiator Brett McGurk and the envoy appointed by Trump for Middle East affairs, Steve Witkoff.
Witkoff’s presence was crucial, given that Trump assumes the American Presidency in a week, even though the bulk of the negotiations were conducted by the team of the current president, Joe Biden. On Monday (13) there were indications that the agreement had practically been closed in the early hours of the morning.
Witkoff, a Jewish real estate businessman, is a friend of Trump and not a diplomat. According to Israeli press reports, he forced Netanyahu to accept terms he had been refusing, such as the withdrawal of his troops from Gaza.
On Friday (10), the envoy announced that he would like to speak with the prime minister during Shabbat, the weekly rest of Judaism, and Netanyahu agreed. The next day, after the conversation, Witkoff headed to conclude the agreement in Qatar. Also unusually, Biden’s team did not object to his presence in the final stretch.
Netanyahu thus had to swallow a truce that he resisted for months. If it is true that he has incapacitated Hamas and its allies for now, he will be juggling to forget the promise that the war would only end with total victory over the terrorists – thus assuming the impossible mission of killing everyone.
The debate was tough until the end, with the final debate lasting from Tuesday to Wednesday night. Hamas, which according to reports had already agreed to the agreement, eventually demanded that Israel detail the exit of its forces from Gaza. Biden and Egyptian dictator, Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, entered the circuit remotely.
Hamas demanded details of the troop withdrawal plan from Israel, which reluctantly provided them. He then called for the Israelis to leave the Gaza-Egypt border corridor, which will only happen gradually. Netanyahu said he had deterred the terrorists from their demand.
With all the reservations that the region imposes, it could be the end of the numerically deadliest conflict in the region, which has already seen three major wars and several smaller conflicts. Hamas, a feared regional force, was reduced to a guerrilla, active but severely limited and in the process of reconstruction.
On October 7, Hamas killed 1,170 people and took 251 hostages. Tel Aviv’s reaction left 46,707 dead as of this Wednesday, according to Arab accounts. Israel’s attacks continued despite the negotiations. So far, there has only been one ceasefire, lasting one week in November 2023, in which 105 hostages were exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
The clash continued to spread, turning into a regional war that almost brought Israel into conflict with the patron of Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran. The rivals exchanged four direct missile salvos, but did not escalate beyond that until now.
Uncertainty is widespread. In Lebanon, a ceasefire is in effect between Israel and Hezbollah, which had escalated its border war of attrition in support of Hamas and ended up seeing its entire leadership bombed to death from the end of last September.
In neighboring Syria, the Iran-allied dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad collapsed in 12 days of attacks by Turkish-backed Islamist insurgents. Israel wasted no time. It annihilated the military capabilities that were left behind and occupied another 400 km2 of the Golan Heights, which it had annexed in 1967 from its neighbor.
There are doubts about how durable the agreement is. There are those who fear that, as Trump had said that the release of the hostages was a condition to avoid “hell” in the Middle East, violence will resume as soon as the exchanges are completed. We speak against this view, of course.
In any case, the ceasefire opens hope for an end to a humanitarian tragedy that includes, and does not transcend, the barbarity perpetrated by Hamas.
The killing of civilians and destruction of infrastructure in Gaza is classified by many as genocide, and Netanyahu has an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him on this charge.
In its defense, Israel says that it does not seek to kill populations and that Hamas has interfered with its logistical and combat network among the civilian population, making it difficult to separate the terrorist chaff from the innocent wheat.
With the ceasefire, Netanyahu in any case gives a belated response to the external public about the blood spilled.
And the resolution of the hostage issue, a point for which he is most criticized within Israel, speaks to the domestic audience.
Politically, however, it is uncertain whether it will give him refreshment. With the Jewish State’s main crisis in decades under control, the focus will be on criticism from its right-wing ultra-Orthodox base, which supports the contested prime minister in power and is already threatening to leave the government.
