Qatar brokered the deal, this link:
JERUSALEM (AP) — Qatar on Wednesday announced a truce-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas that would bring a four-day halt in fighting in a devastating six-week war, win freedom for dozens of hostages held in the Gaza Strip, and also lead to the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners.
Qatar's Foreign Ministry said it would announce within a day when the clock will start ticking on the truce, during which 50 hostages will be released in stages in exchange for what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinians prisoners held by Israel. Those freed by both sides will be women and children.
Humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza would also increase.
The announcement came hours after Israel's Cabinet approved the deal. It capped weeks of indirect Qatari-led negotiations between Israel and Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years. The United States and Egypt were also involved in stop-and-go talks to free some of the roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas and other militants in Gaza.
Hostage releases will begin roughly 24 hours after the deal is approved by all parties, said a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office made no mention of the release of Palestinian prisoners or increased humanitarian aid when it confirmed the Cabinet had approved the deal.
“The government of Israel is committed to bringing all of the hostages home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal,” the office said in a statement.
Ahead of the Cabinet vote, which came after a six-hour meeting stretching into the early morning, Netanyahu said the war against Hamas would resume after the truce expires.
“We are at war, and we will continue the war,” he said. “We will continue until we achieve all our goals.”
In welcoming the deal, President Joe Biden emphasized that Netanyahu has committed to supporting an “extended pause” to make sure not only all hostages are released but that humanitarian assistance can be sent to Palestinians in Gaza.
Biden, who is in Nantucket, Massachusetts, for the Thanksgiving holiday, said the agreement should release some American hostages, and added: “I will not stop until they are all released.”
The Israeli government statement said that the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas.
A longer-term lull could lead to pressure, both international and domestic, for Israel to end its war without achieving its goal of destroying Hamas’ military capabilities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it is standing by to assist any swap in the Israel-Hamas war. Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric met with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar, as well as Qatari political leaders, earlier this week.
Strange wording - Hamas releases "hostages" while Israel releases "prisoners," but the exchange is the deal, not the wording AP puts in the report.
The unstated reality seems to be Israel's IDF forces control Gaza ground, after entry days ago, and will temporarily stay in place and resume the effort to obliterate Hamas, unless that has changed. Within the past week Breitbart reported on Netanyahu's thinking re Gaza, post war:
JERUSALEM, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his opposition Saturday night to a proposal by U.S. President Joe Biden to restore control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority (PA) once Hamas is removed from power and destroyed.
On Saturday, Biden published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he supported Israel, though once again joining the Israeli cause to the Ukrainian one, putting Hamas and Russia in the same category as enemies of the United States.
Biden also reiterated his support for a “two-state solution” as the only answer to the conflict, and added: “As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.”
However, Netanyahu emphatically rejected that idea.
“In Gaza, after the destruction of Hamas, and for a long time thereafter, there will not be a regime that encourages terror, that teaches terror, that funds terror — that also indoctrinates about the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews — this will not be,” Netanyahu vowed at a press conference on Saturday night.
He was alluding to the PA’s record of encouraging terror, including the practice of “pay-to-slay,” in which the PA provides stipends to terrorists in Israeli prisons, and pensions to the families of terrorists killed by Israel.
Despite the loss of U.S. aid under the Taylor Force Act, which President Donald Trump signed in 2018 to prohibit taxpayer dollars from funding the PA as long as it continues “pay-to-slay,” the PA has not changed its policy.
The PA also continues naming public parks and monuments after terrorists, and Palestinian educational materials are frequently filled with anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda.
The PA ran Gaza from 1994 to 2007, when it was ousted by Hamas in a violent coup. Rocket attacks against Israeli civilians began years before it was ousted, and especially from 2001 onwards, despite a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and civilians in 2005.
Precaution in believing Breitbart is often necessary, but in its stating Netanyahu's outlook and intent, the report might be largely correct. That does not mean the two state solution is dead, it means it will not be unless/until Netanyahu is decisively voted out along with his coalition government of extreme right wingers (some even more so than Natanyahu). Once something resembling reason is restored in Israel's government, the Palestinians will have to accept that Israel is unlikely to collapse allowing river to sea Palestine to emerge, so it would need to be back to parameters of two state existence acceptable to both factions. What that might look like is not known, and for now, the fight is still on.
Presuming Netanyahu's stated aim of destroying Hamas happens, then what is the next step in governing Gaza? Presuming Netanyahu is lying in wanting to destroy Hamas, leaving it weakened or an outgrowth of it unaffiliated with the Palestinian Authority which is in the occupied West Bank. With such a rump group taking Gaza leadership, Netanyahu's aim of setting a differing Gaza group against the PA, i.e., with fractured leadership between the two geographical locales Gaza and occupied West Bank, could result, with settlements continuing to be imposed into the West Bank - i.e., the business as usual status quo existing when Hamas launched its Oct. 7 incursion into Israel, but with Gaza under new less aggressive leadership but not under the PA.
Netanyahu in a Machiavellian way liked having two factions to play against each other, while pushing Israeli settlement after settlements into the West Bank. He did not like the idea of a unified Palestinian voice, in both Gaza and in the West Bank, as that would be a sounder precursor of some possible ultimate two state solution of a kind Netanyahu opposes.
Many believe an ultimate two state solution is inevitable. Netanyahu does not.
Apart from that, once the current incursion into Gaza ends, presumably with IDF at some point in time vacating, will Israel's people, particularly moderates and leftist peacemakers gain governing control? After Netanyahu's currently pending ethnic cleansing war is over the people of Israel might be fed up with his regime's approach to life and politics, and replace his regime with a sounder one.
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Readers are most strongly urged to access Steve Timmer's latest left.mn post. It embeds a video every reader should view and consider. Bibi is only Bibi, not larger than that, and being a "Bibi/Zionism as he represents it" skeptic is NOT antisemitism. (Recall the story of the little boy who cried "Wolf!" too often.)