A girl carries a bowl of bread on her head back to her family in Nuseirat, in the Gaza Strip, yesterday. US President Donald Trump said that Israel and Hamas had reached an agreement to release the remaining Israeli hostages and Israel will withdraw their troops to an agreed upon line, a long-awaited breakthrough that could point towards an end to the two-year war in Gaza. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
A girl carries a bowl of bread on her head back to her family in Nuseirat, in the Gaza Strip, yesterday. US President Donald Trump said that Israel and Hamas had reached an agreement to release the remaining Israeli hostages and Israel will withdraw their troops to an agreed upon line, a long-awaited breakthrough that could point towards an end to the two-year war in Gaza. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
After months of deadlock, Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement for the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a long-awaited breakthrough that could point towards an end to the two-year war in the Gaza Strip.
United States President Donald Trump, who helped broker the deal, announcedon social media that both sides had agreed to the first phase of his plan, including that Israel would pull back its troops to an agreed upon line.
Qatar, one of the countries helping negotiate, and Hamas also indicated in statements that the deal would allow for the entry of aid into Gaza.
The details of the deal were not publicly released, including the timing and specifics of the exchange, as well as the line of withdrawal. One official familiar with the details said the exchange was expected as soon as this weekend.
“This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America, and we thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen,” Trump said on Truth Social.
While Israel and Hamas had agreed to an exchange, it was still not clear whether the war in Gaza would end.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has demanded that Hamas disarm, which the militant group has publicly rejected.
Statements on the deal from Hamas, Israel, Trump and Qatar made no mention of Hamas’ arms. And Israel, in its initial statements, did not mention a troop pullback.
Netanyahu issued a statement saying he would convene his Government to sign off on the agreement, calling it a “great day for Israel”.
He thanked Trump but did not provide details.
Hamas in its statement called on Trump, guarantors to the agreement and others to compel Israel “to fully implement the agreement’s requirements and not allow it to evade or delay”.
Last month, Trump unveiled a 20-point plan to end the war and free the remaining hostages.
Israel believes that about 20 hostages are still alive in Gaza and has been seeking the remains of about 25 others.
It was not immediately clear which elements of the plan had been adopted, and which remained unresolved.
Under the President’s proposal, the hostages would be exchanged for 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 1700 Palestinians jailed by Israel during the war.
For every hostage whose remains are released, Israel would also release the remains of 15 Palestinians.
After the deal was announced in the early hours of the Middle East morning, all the main television channels in Israel were broadcasting live, though they usually shut down for the night around midnight.
Tearful relatives of hostages and former hostages were posting emotional and joyful videos on social media.
“That’s it, it’s over!” Meirav Gilboa-Dalal, the mother of hostage Guy Gilboa Dallal, 24, told Channel 12 News as family members cheered in the background.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement posted to the social platform X that the agreement had provoked “a mix of excitement, anticipation, and concern” among its members.
The group expressed “profound gratitude” to Trump and called on the Israeli Government to “convene immediately” to approve the agreement.
“Any delay could exact a heavy toll on the hostages and soldiers,” the group wrote.
Palestinians in Gaza received the news with hope that it might finally bring the war to an end.
Montaser Bahja, an English teacher displaced in Khan Younis with his family, said he felt “joy for the end of the war and the killing, and sorrow for everything we’ve lost”.
Everyone, he added, was awake and glued to the news, waiting to hear when a truce might come into effect.
Negotiations on the hostage and prisoner exchange had resumed in Egypt this week.
Last week Trump warned Hamas that many more of its fighters would be killed if the group did not agree to a deal by Sunday evening local time.
Katya Emelianova kneels beside a portrait of Eden Gez, who was killed at the Nova Festival by Hamas militants in the October 7, 2023, attack, in Tel Aviv, Israel yesterday. Photo / David Guttenfelder, The New York Times
That evening, Hamas said that it would agree to release all of the hostages held in Gaza, living and dead, but wanted to negotiate other elements of the plan.
Trump then said that he believed Hamas was “ready for a lasting peace” and called on Israel to stop bombing Gaza. The following night, Netanyahu said in a televised address that Israel was “on the brink of a great achievement”.
The talks in Egypt have been taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh with the Trump Administration’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser on the region, involved today.
A senior Hamas official, Taher al-Nounou, said that negotiators for the group and for Israel had exchanged lists of which Palestinian prisoners would be released as part of an exchange deal for the hostages.
Trump’s proposal for ending the war stipulated the demilitarisation of Gaza, including the destruction of all “military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities”.
The plan said demilitarisation should be supervised by independent monitors, which would include placing weapons “permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning”.
Some Arab mediators believe that they can persuade Hamas to partially disarm, a step that has long been a red line for the militant group, according to three people familiar with the mediators’ thinking.
The people, two officials and a person close to the negotiators, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Hamas could agree to hand over some of its weapons, as long as Trump can guarantee Israel will not resume fighting.
Izzat al-Rishq, the Qatar-based director of Hamas’ media office, declined to comment in response to detailed questions about whether the group would be open to giving up any of its arms.
Israelis and Palestinians yesterday marked two years since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which ignited the war in Gaza.
About 1200 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the October 2023 attack, and 251 others were abducted, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 65,000 Palestinians have since been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Many of the people kidnapped on October 7 have been freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails during two ceasefires, one in the early months of the war and a second earlier this year.
During some exchanges, gaunt Israeli hostages were paraded by Hamas before large crowds in Gaza, and sometimes made to thank their captors, scenes that further angered many Israelis.
At least eight other hostages were freed in Israeli military operations.
More than three dozen hostages have been killed in captivity, according to an investigation by the New York Times.
