TG Staff
The Guardian / January 27, 2025
Benjamin Netanyahu confirms agreement reached with Hamas for civilian hostage Arbel Yehoud to be released on Thursday.
Displaced Palestinians have started returning to north Gaza, the territory’s interior ministry said, after mediator Qatar said an agreement had been reached to release an Israeli civilian hostage, easing the first major crisis of the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
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Qatar’s statement early on Monday said Hamas would hand over the civilian hostage, Arbel Yehoud, along with two other hostages before Friday. And on Monday, Israeli authorities will allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.
The office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement said the hostage release would take place on Thursday and confirmed that Palestinians would be able to move north on Monday.
“The passage of displaced Palestinians has begun along the Al-Rashid Road via the western part of the Netzarim checkpoint towards Gaza City and the northern part” of the Gaza Strip, an official told the news agency AFP.
Images posted on social media showed thousands of people streaming along sandy roadways fringed by the devastation of more than a year of Israeli airstrikes.
Responding to news that they can begin moving north early on Monday, displaced families burst into cheers at shelters and tent encampments. “No sleep, I have everything packed and ready to go with the first light of day,” said Ghada, a mother of five.
“At least we are going back home, now I can say war is over and I hope it will stay calm,” she told Reuters via a chat app.
Under the ceasefire deal, Israel on Saturday was to begin allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza. But Israel put that on hold because of Yehoud, who Israel said should have been released on Saturday. Hamas accused Israel of violating the agreement.
The release of Yehoud and two other hostages is in addition to the one already set for next Saturday, when three hostages should be released.
In addition, Hamas in a statement said the militant group had handed over a list of required information about all hostages to be released in the ceasefire’s six-week first phase. The Israeli prime minister’s office confirmed it had received the list.
Thousands of Palestinians have gathered at Israeli roadblocks over the past two days, waiting to move north through the Netzarim corridor bisecting the territory, while local health officials on Sunday said Israeli forces fired on the crowd, killing two people and wounding nine.
US President Donald Trump meanwhile suggested that most of Gaza’s population be at least temporarily resettled elsewhere, including in Egypt and Jordan, to “just clean out” the war-ravaged territory. Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians rejected that, amid fears that Israel might never allow refugees to return.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said Palestinians would never accept such a proposal, “even if seemingly well-intentioned under the guise of reconstruction”. He said the Palestinians can rebuild Gaza “even better than before” if Israel lifts its blockade.
Israeli forces fired on the crowds on three occasions overnight and into Sunday, killing two people and wounding nine, including a child, according to Al-Awda hospital, which received the casualties.
Israel’s military in a statement said it fired warning shots at “several gatherings of dozens of suspects who were advancing toward the troops and posed a threat to them”.
Israel has pulled back from several areas of Gaza under the ceasefire, which came into effect last Sunday. The military has warned people to stay away from its forces, which still operate in a buffer zone inside Gaza along the border and in the Netzarim corridor.
Newly sworn-in US defense secretary Pete Hegseth spoke with Netanyahu on Sunday in the Pentagon chief’s first call with a foreign official.
“The secretary stressed that the United States is fully committed, under President Trump’s leadership, to ensure that Israel has the capabilities it needs to defend itself,” the Pentagon said in a statement, which did not specify why Hegseth spoke with Netanyahu instead of his direct counterpart Israel Katz.
In Lebanon, Israeli forces also opened fire on civilian protesters trying to reach their home villages, killing at least 22 people, including at least six women and a Lebanese army soldier, and injuring 124, according to Lebanese health officials. Israel accused the Lebanese army of violating key commitments under the ceasefire deal and the Israeli military warned civilians that returning home would “expose them to danger”.
Hours later on Sunday, the White House said that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend the deadline for Israeli troops to depart southern Lebanon until 18 February, after Israel requested more time to withdraw beyond the 60-day deadline stipulated in a ceasefire agreement that halted the Israel-Hezbollah war in late November.
Hamas freed four female Israeli soldiers on Saturday, and Israel released 200 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom were serving life sentences after being convicted of deadly attacks. But Israel said civilian hostage Yehoud should have been released ahead of the soldiers.
Israel also accused Hamas of failing to provide details on the conditions of hostages set to be freed in the remaining five weeks of the ceasefire’s first phase.
Hamas said it had told mediators – the US, Egypt and Qatar – that Yehoud was alive and provided guarantees that she would be released.
The ceasefire is aimed at ending the 15-month war triggered by Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack and freeing hostages still held in Gaza in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. About 90 hostages are still in Gaza, and Israeli authorities believe at least a third, and up to half, have died.
Itzik Horn, the father of hostages Iair and Eitan Horn, called any resumption of fighting “a death sentence for the hostages” and criticised government ministers who want the war to go on.
The ceasefire’s first phase runs until early March and includes the release of 33 hostages and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The second – and far more difficult – phase, has yet to be negotiated. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining hostages without an end to the war, while Israel has threatened to resume its offensive until Hamas is destroyed.
Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in the 7 October attack, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250. More than 100 were freed during a weeklong ceasefire in November 2023. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages and recovered the remains of dozens more, at least three of them mistakenly killed by Israeli forces. Seven have been freed in the latest ceasefire.
Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It does not say how many of the dead were combatants. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
Israeli bombardment and ground operations have flattened wide swaths of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people. Many who have returned home since the ceasefire began have found only mounds of rubble.
With Reuters and Associated Press
