Israel, Hamas agree on four-day truce, hostage release and aid into Gaza

Families of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militants in the Gaza have been pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on the captives’ safe release. (AFP)
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Updated 22 November 2023
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Israel, Hamas agree on four-day truce, hostage release and aid into Gaza

  • Israeli media say the first release of hostages is expected on Thursday
  • 50 women and children will be released over four days, during which there will be a pause in fighting

GAZA/TEL AVIV: Israel’s government and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.

Officials from Qatar, which has been mediating secret negotiations, as well as the US, Israel and Hamas have for days been saying a deal was imminent.

Hamas is believed to be holding more than 200 hostages, taken when its fighters surged into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.

A statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said 50 women and children will be released over four days, during which there will be a pause in fighting.

For every additional 10 hostages released, the pause would be extended by another day, it said, without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange.

“Israel’s government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal,” said the statement, released after hours of deliberation that were closed to the press.

Hamas said the 50 hostages would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children who are held in Israeli jails. The truce deal will also allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza, the Palestinian group said in a statement.

Israel had committed not to attack or arrest anyone in all parts of Gaza during the truce period, it added.

US President Joe Biden said he welcomed the deal. “Today’s deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released,” he said in a statement.

The Qatar government said 50 civilian women and children hostages would be released from Gaza in exchange for the release “of a number of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons.”

The starting time of the truce would be announced within the next 24 hours, it said in a statement.

The accord is the first truce of a war in which Israeli bombardments have flattened swathes of Hamas-ruled Gaza, killed 13,300 civilians in the tiny densely populated enclave and left about two-thirds of its 2.3 million people homeless, according to authorities in Gaza.

But Netanyahu said Israel’s broader mission was unchanged.

“We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel,” he said in a recorded message at the start of the government meeting.

Hamas said in its statement: “As we announce the striking of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will remain on the look out to defend our people and defeat the occupation.”

RELEASE TO BEGIN ON THURSDAY

Three Americans, including a 3-year-old girl whose parents were among those killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, are expected to be among the hostages to be released, a senior US official said.

In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the US, Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, Israel’s government has said.

Israeli media said the first release of hostages was expected on Thursday. Implementing the deal must wait for 24 hours to give Israeli citizens the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners, reports said.

Kamelia Hoter Ishay, the grandmother of 13-year-old Gali Tarshansky, who is believed to be held in Gaza, said she would not believe reports of a deal until she got a call that the teenager was freed.

“And then I’ll know that it’s really over and I can breathe a sigh of relief and say that’s it, it’s over,” she said.

Qadura Fares, head of the Commission for Prisoners’ Affairs in the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, said that among more than 7,800 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel were about 85 women and 350 minors. Most were detained without charges or for incidents such as hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers, not for launching militant attacks, he said.

Qatar’s chief negotiator in cease-fire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, said that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be working inside Gaza to facilitate the hostages’ release.

He said that the truce means there would be “no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing.”

Al-Khulaifi added that Qatar hopes the deal “will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire. And that’s our intention.”

Hamas has to date released only four captives: US citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on Oct. 20, citing “humanitarian reasons,” and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on Oct. 23.

The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, said late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it has held since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel had died.

“We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death,” Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel.

As attention focused on the hostage release deal, fighting on the ground raged on. Mounir Al-Barsh, director-general of Gaza’s health ministry, told Al Jazeera TV that the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City. Israel said militants were operating from the facility and threatened to act against them within four hours, he said.

On Tuesday, Israel also said its forces had encircled the Jabalia refugee camp, a congested urban extension of Gaza City where Hamas has been battling advancing Israeli armored forces.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA said 33 people were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli air strike on part of Jabalia.

In southern Gaza, Hamas-affiliated media said 10 people were killed and 22 injured by an Israeli air strike on an apartment in the city of Khan Younis.

Reuters could not immediately verify the accounts of fighting on either side.


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Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’

Updated 04 July 2025
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Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’

  • Medical charity warns of new threat from escalation in fighting in Sudan civil war

KHARTOUM: Civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan face mass atrocities and ethnic violence in the civil war between the regular army and its paramilitary rivals, the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Thursday.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have sought to consolidate their power in Darfur since losing control of the capital Khartoum in March. Their predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide in Darfur two decades ago.

The paramilitaries have intensified attacks on El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state which they have besieged since May 2024 in an effort to push the army out of its final stronghold in the region.
“People are not only caught in indiscriminate heavy fighting ... but also actively targeted by the Rapid Support Forces and their allies, notably on the basis of their ethnicity,” said Michel-Olivier Lacharite, Medecins Sans Frontieres’ head of emergencies. There were “threats of a full-blown assault,” on El-Fasher, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people largely cut off from food and water supplies and deprived of access to medical care, he said.


Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed

Updated 04 July 2025
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Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed

ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia moved on Thursday to reassure Egypt about its water supply after completing work on a controversial giant $4 billion dam on the Blue Nile.

“To our neighbors downstream, our message is clear: the dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said.

“The energy and development it will generate stand to uplift not just Ethiopia. We believe in shared progress, shared energy, and shared water. Prosperity for one should mean prosperity for all.”

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is 1.8 km wide and 145 meters high, and is Africa's largest hydroelectric project. It can hold 74 billion cubic meters of water and generate more than 5,000 megawatts of power — more than double Ethiopia’s current output. It will begin full operations in September.

Egypt already suffers from severe water scarcity and sees the dam as an existential threat because the country relies on the Nile for 97 percent of its water. President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Sudan’s leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan met last week and “stressed their rejection of any unilateral measures in the Blue Nile basin.” They were committed to safeguarding water security in the region, Sisi’s spokesman said.


Explosive drone intercepted near Irbil airport in northern Iraq, security statement says

Updated 03 July 2025
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Explosive drone intercepted near Irbil airport in northern Iraq, security statement says

  • The “Flight operations at the airport continued normally,” the Irbil airport authority said

IRBIL, Iraq: An explosive drone was shot down near Irbil airport in northern Iraq on Thursday, the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said in a statement.

There were no casualties reported, according to two security sources.

The “Flight operations at the airport continued normally and the airport was not affected by any damage,” the Irbil airport authority said in a statement.

The incident only caused a temporary delay in the landing of one aircraft, the statement added.


Jordanian and Vatican officials discuss promotion of Petra as destination for Christian pilgrims

Updated 03 July 2025
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Jordanian and Vatican officials discuss promotion of Petra as destination for Christian pilgrims

  • They say there is a strategic opportunity to integrate the UNESCO World Heritage Site into routes for Christian travelers
  • Head of tourism authority says highlighting Petra’s significance to Christian heritage itineraries could enhance Jordan’s position on global religious tourism map

LONDON: Officials from Jordan and the Vatican met on Thursday to discuss ways in which they can cooperate to advance religious tourism, including the promotion of the ancient city of Petra as a destination for Christian pilgrims.

Fares Braizat, who chairs the board of commissioners of the Petra Development and Tourism Regional Authority, said that highlighting the significance of the UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of Christian heritage itineraries could enhance Jordan’s position on the global religious tourism map.

The country has a number of important Christian sites, the most significant of which is the location on the eastern bank of the Jordan River where Jesus is said to have been baptized by John the Baptist. Several popes have visited it, including Francis and John Paul II.

Archbishop Giovanni Pietro Dal Toso, the Vatican’s ambassador to Jordan, confirmed the interest in collaborating with Jordanian authorities, and praised the nation’s stability and its rich historical and religious heritage.

Both officials acknowledged the strategic opportunity that exists to integrate Petra into pilgrimage routes for Christian travelers, the Jordan News Agency reported.

The Petra tourism authority recently lit up the Colosseum in Rome with the signature colors of the historic Jordanian site to celebrate a twinning agreement as part of a marketing strategy to attract European visitors, and to raise Petra’s profile globally as a premier cultural and spiritual tourism destination.

The Vatican itself is also a major tourism destination, for Christian pilgrims in particular. In 2025 it is expected to welcome between 30 and 35 million visitors during its latest Jubilee Year, a significant ecclesiastical event that takes place every 25 years.