After 15 months of devastating war, Israel and Hamas on Wednesday agreed a ceasefire deal that would halt the conflict in Gaza and ensure the release of the remaining 98 hostages held by militants in the strip.
The multi-stage agreement — brokered and guaranteed by the US, Egypt and Qatar — will mark the first ceasefire since a week-long truce in November 2023. It is due to begin taking effect on Sunday.
If implemented in full, it would permanently end the war which began with Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on the Jewish state.
How will the ceasefire begin?
The agreement calls for an initial six-week ceasefire, in which both parties stop fighting. The Israeli military will start to redeploy eastward out of urban centres across Gaza, the agreement says, to what Israel has described as “buffer zones” it will hold on the Palestinian side of the border.
Critically, by the end of the first stage the agreement also calls for Israeli troops to leave the critical route known as the Netzarim corridor that separates the north of the strip from the south, and to leave Gaza’s border with Egypt within 50 days.
According to the terms, the Rafah border crossing connecting Gaza with Egypt, which was seized by Israel last May and mostly destroyed, is expected to be reopened. That would revive the strip’s sole link with the outside world that was not directly controlled by Israel before the war.
Will Palestinians be allowed to go home?
Residents of Gaza will be allowed to return to what remains of their homes, including Palestinians displaced from northern to southern Gaza during the war, a population estimated at hundreds of thousands.
An Israeli official said Israel has insisted that “security arrangements” run by an unnamed private company be put in place at checkpoints leading from south to north. They would aim to ensure militants cannot return to northern Gaza, from which Hamas launched much of its October 7 2023 attack that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.
The deal also requires Israel to allow 600 truckloads of humanitarian aid each day into the shattered territory, half of which would be allocated to northern Gaza, where people have suffered acute hunger, according to international observers.
The north has been hardest hit by Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive, which has killed more than 46,000 people, according to health authorities in the Hamas-controlled territory, and reduced much of the strip to rubble.
International aid groups have said the infrastructure to get food, medicine, fuel and other goods into Gaza will need to be scaled up substantially, as the quantities set out in the deal would increase the amount entering the strip at least threefold.
Which hostages held in Gaza will be released?
For Israel, the crucial win in the agreement’s first stage is the return of 33 hostages still held by Hamas, including children, civilian women, female soldiers, the over-50s and the wounded.
It remains unclear how many people meeting this criteria remain alive, although an Israeli official said this week that “many of them, most of them” were still living.
Under the deal, three female hostages are set to be released on Sunday, followed by at least three more captives every seven days. Crucially for Israel, living hostages will be released first, followed by the deceased towards the end of the six-week period.
What about Palestinian detainees?
For each civilian hostage freed, Israel has committed to releasing 30 Palestinians detained in Israeli jails, with the number increasing to 50 Palestinian detainees for each female Israeli soldier. During this stage, the emphasis will be on freeing Gazans who have been detained during the war, but not implicated in Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack.
More than 100 Palestinians serving life sentences on murder and terrorism charges will also be released, with some exiled to third countries.
Between 1,000 and 1,650 Palestinians are expected to be freed during this stage of the deal, depending on the number of living hostages ultimately released from Gaza.
Do more details need to be agreed?
No later than the 16th day of the ceasefire, the parties are due to start negotiating over the second — and likely more difficult — stage: the release of the remaining 65 hostages, all men under 50, including soldiers, in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire.
The number of Palestinian prisoners set to be released in exchange for each Israeli soldier is likely to be far higher in this second stage, which is expected to last six weeks.
Negotiators have also discussed a potential third stage of the deal, in which bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinian militants would be returned, and the reconstruction of Gaza would begin under Qatari, Egyptian and UN supervision. There is a growing possibility that the second and third stages would be merged, however, analysts said.
Could the ceasefire collapse?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he is not willing to fully end the war until he has achieved “total victory” and the complete “destruction” of Hamas.
That makes the resumption of fighting after the initial six-week truce a distinct possibility.
Yet international pressure — potentially including from the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, who has claimed credit for the ceasefire — may force the veteran Israeli leader to continue implementing the ceasefire agreement beyond the first stage and to fully stop the war.
Cartography and data visualisation by Aditi Bhandari
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