Families across Israel and Gaza are anxiously counting down the hours to the start of a historic ceasefire in Gaza after 15 months of brutal war that has devastated the territory. The truce will allow the return of hostages held since the start of the conflict.
Benjamin Netanyahu has said he expects the hostages to begin being released on Sunday, with Israel approving the deal in the early hours of Saturday morning. It will bring relief to families who have had to deal with the loss of loved ones amid the devastation wrought on Gaza – though they acknowledge the truce is a fragile thing that needs work to last beyond its initial six weeks.
One family member of a hostage told The Independent that "we must go all the way with the ceasefire deal, no one should be left behind” while another said that “enough is enough, bring everyone home”.
The Israeli security cabinet recommended approving the Gaza ceasefire and hostage return deal on Friday, with the rest of the government cabinet following suit several hours later paving the way for the truce to begin on Sunday.
Hamas triggered the war with a cross-border attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that killed some 1,200 people and left around 250 others captive. Israel believes 94 of those are still held in Gaza, with about 60 still alive.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who say women and children make up more than half of those killed. Around 90 per cent of Gaza's 2.3 million population have been forced from their homes at least once thanks to the bombardment, with much of the enclave left a wasteland.
Speaking from Hostage Square, where families hold regular protests demanding the government bring their relatives home, Shay Dickmann, a 29-year-old medical student whose cousins Carmel Gat and Yarden Roman-Gat were captured on 7 October, tells The Independent: “We must go all the way with the ceasefire deal, no one should be left behind”.
Her family knows the painful reality of deals falling through. Yarden was released in November 2023, but Carmel, 39 and an occupational therapist, was due to be released in the current deal when it was first tabled last year. She was shot dead by her captives in a tunnel in Gaza when the talks fell through. In tears, Shay urges: “This uncertainty is ripping families apart – there is a chance they could all be released. If this opportunity is missed you have no idea how long will be until the next time”.
The Israeli cabinet meetings had been delayed on Thursday, with Mr Netanyahu accusing Hamas of backtracking on the deal, amid severe pressure from hardline partners in his government coalition. Underscoring the potential obstacles facing a final ceasefire, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to resign if it was approved. However, he said he would not bring down Mr Netanyahu's government. His fellow hardliner, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, has also threatened to quit the government if it does not go back to war to defeat Hamas when the initial phase of the ceasefire is complete.
Under the first phase of the deal, which is to last 42 days, Hamas has agreed to release 33 hostages including children, women, among them 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. The remainder of the hostages, including male soldiers, are to be released in a second – and much more difficult – phase that will be negotiated during the first. The third phase would address the exchange of bodies of deceased hostages and Hamas members, and a reconstruction plan for Gaza would be launched.
“Seeing people return is going to bring tears of joy,” says Alana Zeitchik, who has six family members seized by Hamas from the Nir Oz kibbutz in the Hamas attack. Four of her captured relatives, including a cousin and her three-year-old twin daughters were released in the last weeklong truce in November 2023. In this deal she expects close friends – the Bibas family – to be returned home, among them is the youngest hostage Kfir Bibas who was just eight months old when he was abducted.
But Alana’s cousin David Cunio, 34 – an electrician and father of the twins – and his brother Ariel Cunio, 27 both civilians and young men, are not on the list of the first 33 to be released. Alana describes the “euphoria” when her cousin Sharon Alony-Cunio, three-year-old twin daughters Emma and Yuli as well as Danielle Alony, 44, and her five-year-old daughter Amelia, were released last year, but she is concerned that the ceasefire may not last long enough to bring her other relatives home.
"We are worried that this will cloud the urgency that we will have to make sure the deal progresses to phase two,” she says. “We don’t have commitment from this government that phase two will happen, or that it will happen in any timely manner.”
As for the comments from Israeli ministers Mr Smotrich and Mr Ben-Gvir, she says: “The ministers who have been saying that they want to reject the deal, they’re a stain on the state of Israel, and they don’t represent the state of Israel... They must put all of our people above the politics.”
Families of some hostages, the majority relatives of young men held by Hamas who are not included in the first phase, sent a letter to Mr Netanyahu on Friday calling on him to publicly approve “all stages of the deal … until the return of the last hostage”. In the letter printed by Haaretz, they said he must do so to “prevent division in the country”.
Israel has stated that the names of the hostages will be made public only after they have been handed to the Israeli military. 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.
Israel’s justice ministry also released a list of 95 Palestinians held in Israeli prisoners to be freed in the first exchange of the hostage release deal with Hamas. Most of the people on the list are women, and the vast majority were arrested after the Hamas attacks on 7 October.
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.
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 first phase of the deal will also allow Palestinians displaced from their homes to be allowed to move freely around the Gaza Strip, while 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 and hunger crisis. Until now, the number of daily aid trucks has been far below this number, according to the UN and aid agencies, leaving hundreds of thousands facing extreme hunger, while much of the population struggles to get what supplies they need.
Ibrahim al-Muslimi, 75, a community leader from the most heavily destroyed areas of Gaza in the north, tells The Independent that families are torn between celebrating the imminent ceasefire and dread about the future.
“Gaza has been disaster struck. We need food after a long harsh wave of hunger, and exorbitant prices. We need water, electricity, sanitation. We need medical assistance. We are living in tents, we need homes. we need psychological assistance.”
As the airstrikes on Gaza continue, in the aftermath of one hit on tents housing displaced people, a boy picked through damaged items on a floor littered with canned food and coffee pots.
That attack killed two people and wounded seven at an encampment close to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, according to medics.
Also in Khan Younis, mourners gathered around the body of a man killed in an Israeli strike as women hugged each other and cried.
“Life has become an unbearable hell,” resident Jomaa Abed al-Aal told Reuters.
Longer-term questions about post-war Gaza remain, including who will rule the territory or oversee the daunting task of its reconstruction. Hanaa Ahmed, 64, who has been displaced five times, has lost numerous family members to airstrikes and her son is missing as he was arrested by the Israeli military and held incommunicado. “The most important aspect of the deal for me is the release of prisoners from Israeli prisons. I am also worried about the process of rebuilding and living long years in tents. The feelings of anxiety continue.”
Ibrahim reflects the thoughts of many in Gaza when he says that he hopes countries around the world “stand with us and do not abandon us”.
