Celebrations erupted across the Gaza Strip Wednesday as the ceasefire agreement, negotiated for months by various international diplomats, was announced as finalized. Unlike the previous four times when a ceasefire was reached over the past 466 days, Israel did not change the terms and pull out at the last moment.
The Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Rahman Al Thani announced reaching a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.
The Qatari Prime Minister said that the agreement includes 3 stages, and its implementation will begin next Sunday.
Medics that have dug people out from under rubble with their bare hands daily for 15 months are now celebrating the ceasefire deal.pic.twitter.com/wlZSYqOJGb
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) January 15, 2025
“We will rebuild Gaza, and it will become even more beautiful than before,” says a resilient Palestinian woman following the announcement of a ceasefire deal.
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) January 15, 2025
Even as the announcement was made in international media outlets, Israeli airstrikes killed 23 Palestinians.
18 citizens were killed and others were injured when the occupation bombed homes of citizens near the Engineers Syndicate in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, west of Gaza City.
A Wafa correspondent said that the Israeli occupation forces bombed the house of the Al-Nabih family in Al-Shawa Square in the Al-Daraj area east of Gaza City, which led to the killing of 3 citizens.
Two citizens were killed and others were injured when the Israeli occupation forces bombed the house of the Al-Lahham family in the Qizan Rashwan area, south of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
In addition, the Israeli occupation forces bombed several houses in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, which led to the death of a number of Palestinians.
The reporter starts taking off his press gear as he announces a ceasefire agreement and the crowd erupts in cheers as they help him take his jacket off and one of the guys puts him on his shoulders to celebrate pic.twitter.com/k9YbhbyoS5
— سماح | 🧚🏾♀️samah (@samah_fadil) January 15, 2025
According to Al Jazeera, the ceasefire will take three phases:
The initial phase will last six weeks, and will involve a limited prisoner exchange, the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops in Gaza and a surge of aid into the enclave.
Thirty-three Israeli captives, including women, children and civilians over the age of 50 – taken during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 – will be released. In exchange, Israel will release a larger number of Palestinian prisoners during this phase, including prisoners serving life sentences. Among the Palestinians being released are around 1000 who were detained after October 7.
In tandem with the exchange of captives, Israel will withdraw its forces from Gaza’s population centres to areas no more than 700 metres inside Gaza’s border with Israel. However, that may exclude the Netzarim Corridor, the militarised belt bisecting the Strip and controlling movement along it – the withdrawal from Netzarim is expected instead to take place in stages.
Israel will allow civilians to return to their homes in the enclave’s besieged north, where aid agencies warn famine may have taken hold, and allow a surge of aid into the enclave – up to 600 trucks per day.
Israel will also allow wounded Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment, and open the Rafah crossing with Egypt seven days after the start of the implementation of the first phase.
Israeli forces will reduce their presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, the border area between Egypt and Gaza, and then withdraw completely no later than the 50th day after the deal comes into effect.
Second and third phase:
Details of the second and third phases, though understood to be agreed to in principle, are to be negotiated during the first phase. US President Joe Biden has said that the ceasefire will continue even if the negotiations on the second and third phases go beyond the initial six weeks of the first phase.
Critically, Israel has insisted that no written guarantees be given to rule out a resumption of its attacks once the first phase is complete and its civilian captives returned.
However, according to an Egyptian source cited by the Associated Press news agency, the three mediators involved in the talks – Egypt, Qatar and the United States – have given Hamas verbal guarantees that negotiations will continue and that all three would press for a deal that would see the second and third stages implemented before an initial six-week window has elapsed.
What is planned for the second phase?
If it is determined that the conditions have been met for a second phase, Hamas will release all the remaining living captives, mostly male soldiers, in return for the freeing of more Palestinians held in the Israeli prison system. In addition, according to the current document, Israel would initiate its “complete withdrawal” from Gaza.
However, these conditions, which have yet to be voted upon by the Israeli cabinet, are at odds with the stated positions of many of the far-right wing members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu’s cabinet, which he relies upon for support, as well as Netanyahu’s own past positions, in which he has repeatedly used the presence of Hamas in Gaza to prolong the conflict.
The third phase
The details of a third phase remain unclear.
Should the conditions of the second stage be met, the third phase will see the bodies of the remaining captives handed over in return for a three- to five-year reconstruction plan to be conducted under international supervision.
Mass celebrations in Gaza on their victory over Israel pic.twitter.com/bMn7wX5BwU
— Khalissee (@Kahlissee) January 15, 2025
