After 476 days, the Israeli war on Gaza is closer than ever to ending, after a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal was announced in Doha, Qatar, between Israel and Hamas. The deal will enter into effect next Sunday, January 19.
The Qatari Prime Minister, Mohammad Bin AbdulRahman Al Thani announced the deal in Doha, late on Wednesday, January 15, following days of anticipation and intensified talks in Doha, which saw important breakthroughs on key issues that had been deemed ‘unsolvable’ in previous rounds of talks. Among such issues are Israel’s acceptance of withdrawing its forces from the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors, and the return of displaced Palestinians to their destroyed homes in the north of the strip. Israel had insisted on refusing both conditions in past negotiations, which prolonged the war for months.
Shortly before the announcement of the deal, US president-elect, Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “We have a deal for the hostages in the Middle East. They will be released shortly.” According to leaks, Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, directly pressured Netanyahu to move his positions and accept the deal.
According to reports, the ceasefire deal includes two phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, will include a complete halt of hostilities, and a gradual release of Israeli captives in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian captives in Israeli jails. In this phase, Hamas and other Palestinian factions will release 33 Israelis who were captured on October 7, 2023, including all remaining five women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses. It is not known yet who of them is still alive. Israel will simultaneously release hundreds of Palestinians, from the same category, reaching up to 1,000 prisoners and detainees.
The Israeli army will begin to withdraw its forces from the populated areas of the Gaza Strip on the first day of the ceasefire. The return of displaced Palestinians to the north will begin on the 7th day of the ceasefire. Israel backed down on its previous refusal to allow the return of Palestinians to the north, as well as previous stipulations around age restrictions. The displaced who return on foot only will be searched, but not those who will return in vehicles. The deal also stipulates the entry of humanitarian aid in the first days of the ceasefire, at a rate of 600 trucks a day. The aid that will enter in the first phase include medical supplies and necessary material to rehabilitate destroyed hospitals and bakeries.
Negotiations over the details of the second phase will begin on the 16th day of the ceasefire.The second phase will see the release of the remaining captives being held in Gaza, specifically Israeli army soldiers and officers, as well as the remaining bodies of killed captives. The names and numbers of Palestinian detainees to be released in this phase is yet to be negotiated. This phase will also include the beginning of reconstruction in Gaza. Israel will complete its withdrawal from the Gaza strip in the second phase, maintaining only a military presence in a 700 meter strip along the fence line of the strip, and in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which runs along the border with Egypt.
Israel will completely withdraw from the Rafah crossing point. US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators gave guarantees to secure the completion of Israeli withdrawal. The third phase will see negotiations for a permanent end of the war.
During the announcement of the ceasefire deal on Wednesday, Qatar’s Prime Minister thanked the US, and especially Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, as well as Egyptian mediators for helping secure the deal. He also affirmed that Qatar, Egypt and the US will continue to mediate talks over the second and third phase, and oversee the implementation.
Shortly after the announcement in Doha, the US president Joe Biden also released a statement, emphasizing that the deal will include the release of captives with US nationalities, and ill, elderly and female captives. He also said that his team and the efforts of his administration in providing military assistance to Israel, and weakening Hezbollah and Iran led to the deal.
For its part, Hamas said in a short statement that the deal is “the fruit of the legendary steadfastness of our people and its resistance,” considering it “a step towards our [the Palestinian] people’s aims of liberation and return [of refugees].”
In a televised speech, Hamas’s politburo chief Khalil Al-Hayeh said that the ceasefire deal came after “the most horrible genocide in modern history, which will remain a stain of shame on the front of all humanity, especially those who supported it with tones of bombs and weapons.”
Israeli president Yitzhak Herzog expressed in a televised speech his “support to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the negotiations team,” calling upon cabinet members to vote for the deal, which he considered “the right choice.” Netanyahu’s cabinet will meet on Thursday to vote on the ceasefire deal. In his address, Herzog said that “there is no bigger moral or human or Jewish obligation than returning our sons and daughters home,” in reference to the Israeli captives in Gaza.
On the ground in Israel, the deal stirred controversy since before its announcement. The families of Israeli captives have been protesting in Tel Aviv, demanding the release of all captives at once. A number of the captives’ family members also protested during a meeting with Israel’s war minister Yizrael Katz, accusing the Israeli government of cherry-picking the captives that would be released in the first phase.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benyanin Netanyahu has been holding a string of meetings with his political allies since Monday, especially his finance minister Bezalelel Smotrich and Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have vocally opposed any ceasefire in Gaza, threatening on multiple occasions to resign from the cabinet if a deal is reached.
On Tuesday, Smotrich called the deal “catastrophic,” while Ben-Gvir called it “a capitulation to Hamas.” Ben-Gvir called upon Smotrich to resign from the government, in protest against the deal. Ben-Gvir also said that thanks to his pressure, Netanyahu sabotaged the ceasefire talks last July. Ben-Gvir’s statements contradicted Netanyahu’s and the US position that it was Hamas, not Israel, who caused the failure of the ceasefire talks.
Meanwhile, as Palestinians in Gaza celebrated the news of the ceasefire, Israeli warplanes intensified their strikes on the Gaza Strip, especially on Gaza City, shortly after the ceasefire announcement, killing dozens in a matter of hours. As of Wednesday, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, rose to 46,707 and 110,265 wounded, while 10,000 remained missing under the rubble. According to Palestinian health authorities, 70% of the killed are women, children, and elderly.
Watched and listened to CNN, MSNBC a great deal yesterday, into the evening. Three hours this morning. Always focused on the hostages, lots of hostage family members (understand) but no NO NO, Palestinian Americans to talk about Palestinian family members massacred over last 15 months. No Palestinian historians, experts etc on either one of these programs. Always host saying things like “so many lives lost on both sides.” Always drawing false equivalency between the deaths of 1200 Israeli Jews slaughtered by Hamas and the 46-70 thousand Palestinians (half children) slaughtered by Israel over the last 15 months.
Clearly a requirement or self censorship that if a host or guest brings up the number of Palestinians massacred (46-70 thousand) by Israel over last 15 months the person must always draw and equal comparison to the 1200 Israeli Jews killed. MSNBC Ana Cabrera really guilty of this, Of course most others as well.
There is evidence that Biden and his Zionists zealots intentionally delayed the Gaza cease fire deal for eight months so that Israel could launch its attack on Hezbollah, weaken it, and allow for a coordinated regime change offensive by al-Qaeda rebels in neighboring Syria after the US election. They wanted time to prepare the ground for regime change in Syria. They had to keep the Gaza war going to accomplish this. There is also solid evidence that the continuation of the war in Gaza for those eight months cost Kamala Harris the election.
What this means is that Biden put his zealotry for Israel, allowing Israel to keep and steal more Palestine land, above his own Democrat party loyalty. This is the ultimate betrayal.
All reports today indicate that the Gaza cease fire deal that was announced is, word for word, the same as what was put forth last May, and which Hamas agreed to last June. Israel and Biden intentionally delayed the deal so that it could weaken Hezbollah starting in September, with the exploding pagers, ground invasion, assassinations, and massive aerial bombing. All of it done in coordination with al-Qaeda rebels preparing their offensive from Idlib province in Syria. It was all coordinated between Israel, Turkey and the U.S. That is why the Gaza cease fire deal was delayed by the US for months, with Blinken lying about Hamas delaying the deal. They wanted time to prepare for regime change in Syria.
For example, the US supported al-Tanf rebels, located in the Southeast of Syria, at that US controlled border crossing, say that they were instructed to prepare for the ‘mother of all battles’ days before the al-Qaeda rebels even launched their offensive toward Aleppo from Idlib, and then later down to Damascus. These al-Tanf rebels were so prepared that they actually captured Palmyria, cutting off the road to Deir Ezor in the East, and the only remaining road to Baghdad, and advanced all the way to the suburbs of Damascus before the al-Qaeda rebels even got to Damascus.
Thousands more civilians in Gaza died during this delay, and dozens of hospitals and schools were bombed, all so that the US and Israel and Turkey could achieve their long-promised regime change in Syria. A promise made to Saudia Arabia back in 2002 in exchange for Saudi ‘permission’ for the US to remove Saddam in Iraq. This permission from the Saudis’ was necessary for that Iraq war to proceed in 2003. Throughout the previous decade, following the Gulf war, the Saudis’ had refused to allow for this removal, fearing a Sunni takeover.
So, with the regime change in Syria, twenty years later, the US finally fulfilled it’s part of the grand bargain made to carry out the Iraq war. That is why it was necessary to delay the cease fire deal in Gaza. That is why these criminals thought it was necessary for more Palestinians to die.
And that is why Donald Trump is now President !
As others have pointed out, the deal is the same as the one proposed 8 months ago. It’s interesting reading The Forward, a pro-Israel blog that hasn’t completely lost its mind ( unlike the Tablet ):
The hostage deal announced today — more than 15 months after Hamas’ massacre on Oct. 7 — is the same one that was presented to Israel more than eight months ago, in May. It’s a deal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu found ways to scupper at the time, saying he would “not agree to any proposal that ends the war….Politics is why too many hostages will be or have been returned to their loved ones as corpses, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat and Almog Sarusi, all of whom were murdered by Hamas in September. For those of us, like me, who truly believed that the only party holding up negotiations was Hamas, not Israel — and that Hamas needed to be decisively destroyed before the war could end — this realization is devastating….“In the last year, using our political power, we managed to prevent this deal from going ahead, time after time,” boasted Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s far-right national security minister, on Tuesday. “Netanyahu thwarted a deal for a year to protect his government,” he added today.
https://forward.com/opinion/688939/hostage-deal-ceasefire-netanyahu-lies/
o/t Friday Jan 17: omg watching Morning Joe which I do many mornings while going back and forth with Cspan’s Washington Journal. Joe, Mika, Katy Kay, Clarence Page, Richard Haas, Jonathan Lemiere were discussing the Ceasefire agreement. The segment goes to Richard Engel’s reporting in the region. They show a segment of that little Palestinian boy trying to dig himself out of the rubble. Just his arm sticking out digging. Then they show people trying to help him out. The report goes onto say the little Palestinian boy is 3 has lost all of his family members under the rubble due to an Israeli missile or bomb or whatever Israel blew up that building with. The shot goes back to the Morning Joe crew sitting around the table they DO NOT even whisper about that segment with that little 3 year old trying to dig himself out of the rubble. Not a mention of him, his Palestinian family slaughtered by Israel…nothing at all not a whisper. They went on to discuss the hostages.
For 15 months I have been shocked (not really) by MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mika’s, Willies, Haas’s, stone cold attitudes about the deaths, massacre of 46-70 thousand Palestinians. Half being children. Constant coverage of the 1200 Israeli Jews who were slaughtered by Hamas. Endless coverage about the hostages. NO NO compassion demonstrated by Joe, Mika, Willie, Haas for the horrendous circumstances of the Palestinians over last 15 months. Granted that program has essentially ignored the plight of Palestinians for years. However, that scene just some minutes ago with that segment of that little boy trying to dig himself out of the rubble and not one of them mentioning what they had just seen was stone cold shocking. Demonstrates how seriously disconnected they are from true compassion.
During this morning show they will have Mohammad Ali’s widow on talking about Ali’s level of compassion. You can be sure Joe and Mika will be going on and on about how people need to have more compassion. Cannot get anymore absurd and sickening.
And how many days to israel ignoring it again???