Israel Qatar: Ceasefire in Gaza to begin on Sunday morning
The ceasefire agreed between Israel and the Islamist Hamas is to come into force in the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning at 7.30 a.m. CET, according to the mediating state of Qatar. The two parties to the conflict and the mediators had agreed on this, wrote Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Madschid al-Ansari in a post on the X platform.
18.01.2025, 10:04
SDA
It had previously been reported that the ceasefire would come into force at 11.15 a.m. CET. According to the Israeli news website "Ynet", however, the release of the first hostages is still planned for 15:00 CET.
Following Israel's security cabinet, the entire government of the Jewish state also voted in favor of the agreement with Hamas after a seven-hour meeting, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced during the night. According to the media, the far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had threatened to leave the coalition if the agreement was approved. According to Israeli media, in the end 24 ministers voted in favor of the deal, eight against.
What happens now
* According to Israeli law, relatives of terror victims may appeal against the release of certain Palestinian prisoners. They have 24 hours to file such a petition with the Supreme Court following the government's decision. However, it is not expected that the judges will see any reason to thwart the agreement.
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* According to the agreement, the ceasefire will initially apply for 42 days.
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* During this time, 33 of the 98 hostages who have been held by Hamas for many months and in some cases even years are to be released. The first three of them are to be handed over on Sunday. According to reports, Hamas will announce today who they are. It is assumed that they are three civilians.
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* In return, according to Israeli sources, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be released from Israeli jails. Israel's Justice Ministry published a list with the names of more than 90 prisoners who are to be exchanged for the first hostages on Sunday.
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* The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza is to reopen and the import of humanitarian aid for the Palestinians is to be significantly increased.
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* Israel's military is to withdraw from densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip. The inhabitants who have fled to the south of the sealed-off coastal strip should be allowed to move freely again and return to their residential areas in northern Gaza under international supervision.
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* The details of the second and third phases of the agreement on a permanent end to the war and a complete withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip are to be clarified by the parties to the conflict during the first phase.
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Will the agreement hold?
How stable the agreement will be in the long term is questionable. The intensive negotiations of the past two days, when controversial details were still being discussed at the last minute, showed once again how delicate the overall package is. Netanyahu only announced early on Friday that an agreement had been reached - almost two days after the mediating state of Qatar had actually already announced such an agreement.
In view of the deep mistrust, it remains to be seen whether Israel's government and Hamas will adhere to the agreed steps for weeks to come and whether, for example, certain passages will be interpreted differently. The outcome of the negotiations in the next phases of the deal on a permanent end to the war and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is also uncertain.
Among other things, both warring parties still have to agree on the lists of the remaining Hamas hostages to be released and the prisoners to be released by Israel. Among the abductees are people with dual citizenship, including several Germans. As the "Times of Israel" reported last night, there are more than 700 Palestinian prisoners on a new list from the Israeli Ministry of Justice, including several members of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is in power in the West Bank and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.
The timetable and extent of the withdrawal of the Israeli military from the Gaza Strip and the question of how the relatively small area on the Mediterranean should be governed after the end of the war are also unresolved.
Will Israel continue the war?
If the agreement fails, fighting could break out again in the largely destroyed Palestinian territory - especially as there are strong supporters of a continuation of the war on both sides. For example, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu could decide to pull out of the agreement after the first phase to avoid the collapse of his governing coalition, Daniel Levy, a former Israeli government official and negotiator, told the Wall Street Journal.
According to the US news site Axios, Netanyahu is reported to have said at the security cabinet meeting that the US had assured him of support for the continuation of the war in the event that further negotiations fail and Israel's security demands are not met - both the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden and the camp of his designated successor Donald Trump. The US news site referred to a confidant of Netanyahu.
Security circles: Preparations being made to open border crossing
Meanwhile, preparations for the opening of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip are in full swing, according to Egyptian security sources. Dozens of trucks are standing by. According to the Egyptian Red Crescent, a total of around 600 trucks have been prepared. The Palestinian side of the border crossing has been controlled by Israel's army since May last year. The crossing has been closed since then.
