The First Hostages-For-Positors Exchange After a Four Day Perturbation Agreement Between Israel and Hamas
TEL AVIV, Israel — A four-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza went into effect early Friday. The first exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli ones takes place after a temporary truce.
The cease-fire agreement announced early Wednesday between Israel’s government and Hamas raised hopes for a respite in the fighting and for families to be reunited with their loved ones. But for the next day and a half, talks on the aspects of the deal were held, underscoring the vulnerability of the agreement and the intense mutual distrust.
The hostages-for-prisoners exchange is expected to occur in batches over the four days of the truce. Israel, which says it notified the families of the hostages expected for release on Friday, has not made a list public.
The agreement also included an increase in humanitarian aid for Gaza, and on Thursday Hamas said that 200 trucks carrying relief supplies and four fuel trucks would enter the territory on a daily basis during the cease-fire. Israel has largely banned fuel from entering Gaza since the beginning of the war, saying that Hamas would use it for military purposes.
Shadi Hijazi, a 23-year-old construction worker in Gaza, said that the deal would offer a reprieve from thundering Israeli airstrikes and would allow some Gazans to grieve their losses.
Israel’s Security Prisoner List for the First Stage of a War-Breaking Campaign in the Gaza Strip. A Palestinian Associated with National Security
The Israeli military continued its operations in the Gaza Strip even as a cease-fire was about to take effect.
The Israeli military said on Thursday night that the takeover of the north of the Gaza Strip is only the first stage of a long campaign.
Israel does not fly its warplanes over the southern part of Gaza for the duration of the cease-fire, and will not do so for six hours a day in the northern part.
The official said the Palestinians to be released from Israeli prisons, most of them from the West Bank, will be taken by bus to their home districts. The official said the first would be released before any of the Israeli hostages, so it was not certain if they would be freed in stages.
The list of 300 names was published by the Israeli government, all of whom were 18 years of age or younger. It was not immediately known who would be among the 150 to be released.
Security prisoners are people who have been arrested in connection with offenses against national security. There are accusations of supporting terrorism as well as acts of violence and throwing stones. There are also several charges of attempted murder. Most of the prisoners on the list had not been convicted of the charges.
The Interim Committee on the Status of the Red Cross and the United Nations (NPR): ICRC Report on the Israeli Operation “Inside the Gaza War Zone“
“Israel should immediately allow for the permanent resumption of sufficient fuel, water and electricity supplies, without which humanitarian needs will continue to deepen,” the Red Cross said.
“Anything that can be done to scale humanitarian aid should be done during this time of calm,” the ICRC said in a statement.
But the ICRC’s spokesperson in Jerusalem, Sarah Davies, told NPR that the group was “not made aware of any agreement reached by both parties” related to such visits. “Should visits be agreed upon, the ICRC stands ready” to conduct them, Davies said, adding that the aid group “does not take part in the negotiations between the parties to the conflict.”
There are talks regarding a new date and time to implement the truce between Israel and Hamas, which is expected to be announced in the coming hours according to the foreign ministry.
The reason for the delay was not immediately clear, but Israel’s Channel 12 quoted an unnamed Israeli political official as saying “The delay isn’t substantive, but technical.”
Around midnight Wednesday and just hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in a televised, late-evening media briefing where he discussed the agreement, Israel’s National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said the temporary cease-fire was still on track “according to the original agreement,” but that it wouldn’t occur before Friday.
According to the OCA, in the hours before the truce began, Israel’s military intensified strikes with intense ground battles against Hamas. About 200 patients are still trying to leave the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, which is a concern for the United Nations. Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported that the hospital was hit by Israeli fire, and that Israeli tanks surrounded it.
“The cease-fire for humanitarian purposes is temporary,” the spokesman said, insisting that northern Gaza, where the fighting has been concentrated, “is a dangerous war zone and it is forbidden to move around.”
The Israeli military spokesman released a video to the population of Gaza about half an hour before the cease-fire began.
“Over the last day and night, IDF troops on the ground, in the air, and at sea continued to strike terror targets, operate in different areas to locate suspicious structures and engage with terrorists,” the military’s statement said. Over the last few days, the forces struck a terror tunnel route.
The military said it had completed operational preparations according to the combat lines of the pause, and had destroyed the tunnel under the hospital in northern Gaza.
Israel launched a harsh response to the Hamas attacks, hitting the Gaza strip with air and ground strikes. Israel now controls a large portion of Gaza’s north.
Palestinians were seen in the streets of Khan Younis, as the fighting paused. But Palestinian media reported several Israeli strikes in northern Gaza in the hours leading up to the cease-fire. Also, about 15 minutes after the truce was supposed to start, Israel’s army reported air raid sirens near the border with Gaza, a possible sign of rockets being fired into Israel.
The agreement officially went into effect at 7 a.m. local time, but there was no official announcement from either Israel or Hamas to signal its start. It comes after many people have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army.