Negotiators Reach Cease-Fire and Hostage Deal for Gaza

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The agreement, which must still be approved by the Israeli cabinet, incited joy in the Gaza Strip and Israel, even as some feared that it could fall apart.

Negotiators announced on Wednesday that they had reached a cease-fire deal for the war in the Gaza Strip, 15 months after a devastating Hamas-led attack on Israeli soil set off a relentless military campaign with few parallels in recent history.
In the attack that set it all in motion, the Oct. 7, 2023, raid on southern Israel led by Hamas fighters, some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed, stunning Israelis. In the months that followed, an estimated 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them also civilians, were killed and entire towns leveled.
On Wednesday, Gazans were allowing themselves to hope for an end to the long months of hunger, destruction and fear, while Israelis were anxiously readying themselves to welcome home dozens of men and women taken hostage by Hamas during the 2023 attack.
Under the terms of the provisional deal, reached in the waning days of the Biden administration, the Israeli military will begin to pull back its force and Hamas will begin releasing some of the hostages seized during the bloody raid that set off the war. If approved by Israel’s cabinet, the cease-fire will take effect on Sunday.
“An entire country is holding its breath tonight,” said Yair Lapid, the centrist opposition leader of Israel, where the cabinet was expected to vote on the agreement on Thursday.
Hamas, in a statement, said, “It is a historic moment in the conflict with our enemy.” It praised the “legendary resilience” of Gazans in the face of a war that had unleashed a humanitarian crisis. One of the group’s leaders also had praise for the Hamas-led attack that prompted the war, despite the bitter price paid by Palestinians.