Lorenzo Tondo and Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem
The Guardian / January 17, 2025
Ratification comes after delay led to fears that deal would come unstuck. It now passes to full cabinet for signoff.
Israel’s security cabinet has ratified a ceasefire deal to exchange dozens of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinians in Israeli jails and pause the 15-month war in Gaza for an initial six weeks.
The approval came after an unexpected delay that sparked fears that last-minute disagreements between Israel and Hamas might scuttle the agreement. Far-right members of the coalition government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also threatened to derail months of work to end the conflict.
The deal will now go to the full cabinet for the final signoff so that the agreement can be implemented on Sunday with the release of the first hostages and prisoners.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, welcomed the decision of the security cabinet to approve the deal and said he expected “the government to do so as well soon”. “This is a vital step on the path to upholding the basic commitment a nation has to its citizens,” he said.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s hardline national security minister, who on Thursday announced that he would quit the government if it ratified the ceasefire deal, issued a last-minute plea for other members of the government to vote against the agreement. “Everyone knows that these terrorists will try to harm again, try to kill again,” he said in a video statement.
Israel’s extreme-right security minister says he will quit government if ceasefire ratified – video
According to Israeli media, Ben-Gvir and the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, voted against deal, while the other ministers voted in favour.
The Israeli high court is still scheduled to hear petitions against elements of the agreement, but is widely expected not to intervene.
Under the first phase of the deal, which is to last 42 days, Hamas has agreed to release 33 hostages including children, women, including female soldiers, and men aged over 50. In exchange, Israel would release 50 Palestinian prisoners for every female Israeli soldier released by Hamas, and 30 for other female hostages.
Israel has stated that the names of the hostages will be made public only after they had been handed over to the IDF. A list containing the names of those who will be released over the next six weeks has been circulating on the main Israeli news sites since the early hours of Friday morning.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said that the French-Israeli citizens Ofer Kalderon and Ohad Yahalomi are in the first group of hostages to be freed.
The releases will be staggered. On Sunday, three Israeli hostages are expected to be released, followed by four more on the seventh day, and again at the end of each week of the ceasefire.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the list of Palestinian prisoners to be freed will be published on the justice ministry’s website, “along with the offences for which they were convicted”, immediately after the cabinet approves the agreement.
According to a copy of the agreement seen by The Guardian, nine ill and wounded Israelis will be released in exchange for 110 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israeli jails. Men over 50 on the list of 33 hostages will be released in return for prisoners serving life sentences at a ratio of 1:3, and 1:27 for other sentences.
Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, two mentally ill Israeli men who entered Gaza a decade ago and have since been held hostage by Hamas, will be released in exchange for 30 prisoners. A further 47 prisoners rearrested after being freed as part of a 2011 deal that brought home the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Gaza will also be released.
The deal will also allow in the first phase Palestinians displaced from their homes to be allowed to move freely around the Gaza Strip, which Israel has cut into two halves with a military corridor. Wounded people are supposed to be evacuated for treatment abroad, and aid to the territory should increase to 600 trucks a day, above the 500 minimum that aid agencies say is needed to contain Gaza’s devastating humanitarian crisis.
In the second phase, the remaining living hostages would be sent back and a corresponding ratio of Palestinian prisoners would be freed, and Israel would completely withdraw from the territory. The specifics are subject to further negotiations, which are due to start 16 days into the first phase.
The third phase would address the exchange of bodies of deceased hostages and Hamas members, and a reconstruction plan for Gaza would be launched. Arrangements for future governance of the strip remain hazy. The Biden administration and much of the international community have advocated for the semi-autonomous West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which lost control of Gaza to Hamas in a brief civil war in 2007, to return to the strip. Israel, however, has repeatedly rejected the suggestion.
Dozens of relatives of hostages signed a letter calling on Netanyahu to commit that “all stages of the deal will be carried out until the return of the last hostage”.
G7 leaders welcomed the approval, describing it as a significant development.
“With a ceasefire soon to take hold, it is also crucial that we seize this opportunity to put an end to the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza,” a statement said. “We reaffirm our support for a credible pathway towards peace leading to a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side in peace, dignity, and security.”
Israeli negotiators are due to arrive in Cairo on Friday evening to discuss the logistical coordination of the agreement.
Israeli warplanes kept up intense strikes in Gaza until Thursday night. Palestinian authorities said that at least 86 people had been killed in the day after the truce was announced. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said late on Thursday that they had attacked approximately 50 targets throughout the Gaza Strip in 24 hours.
In more than 15 months of war, more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed and most of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed. The international court of justice is studying claims that Israel has committed genocide.
About 1,200 people in Israel were killed and another 250 taken hostage in the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 that triggered the war. One hundred of the hostages were freed in exchange for 240 women and children held in Israeli jails as the result of a ceasefire deal struck in November 2023 that collapsed after a week.
Lorenzo Tondo is a Guardian correspondent
Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for The Guardian
