DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — A four-day truce in the Israel-Hamas war took effect early Friday, setting the stage for the exchange of dozens of hostages held by militants in Gaza in return for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The halt in fighting promised some relief for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, who have endured weeks of Israeli bombardment, as well as families in Israel fearful for the fate of loved ones taken captive during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.
The cease-fire kicked off at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and is to last at least four days. During this period, Gaza’s ruling Hamas group pledged to free at least 50 of the about 240 hostages it and other militants took on Oct. 7. Hamas said Israel would free 150 Palestinian prisoners. The deal also provides for more aid to reach southern Gaza, where Palestinians are facing severe shortages of food, water, medicine and electricity.
Not long after the cease-fire took effect, four fuel tankers and four tankers with cooking gas entered the Gaza Strip at the Rafah crossing from Egypt, Israel said. During the cease-fire Israel has agreed to allow the delivery of 130,000 liters (34,342 gallons) of fuel per day, roughly double what it has previously permitted but still only a small portion of Gaza’s estimated daily needs of more than 1 million liters.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
For most of the past seven weeks of war, Israel had barred the entry of any fuel to Gaza, claiming it could be used by Hamas for military purposes. United Nations aid agencies pushed back against such claims, saying fuel deliveries were closely supervised and urgently needed to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. Fuel is need to run generators that power water treatment facilities, hospitals, telecommunications networks and other critical infrastructure.
The first 50 hostages being released under the agreement are Israeli citizens, including some who have a second nationality, according to a Hamas official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details with the media.
The official would not comment on media reports that Hamas had also agreed to release non-Israelis, including 23 Thai nationals. Thailand’s foreign minister told reporters in Bangkok he had not yet been able to confirm the reports.
Both sides will release women and children first. Israel said the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed.
The truce-for-hostages deal was reached in weeks of intense indirect negotiations, with Qatar, the United States and Egypt serving as mediators. If it holds, it would mark the first significant break in fighting since Israel declared war on Hamas seven weeks ago.
The agreement raised hopes of eventually winding down the war, which has leveled vast swaths of Gaza, fueled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East. Israel has pushed back against such speculation, saying it was determined to resume its massive offensive once the truce ends.
A first group of 13 women and children held by Hamas will be freed Friday afternoon, according to Majed al-Ansari, the spokesman of the Qatari foreign ministry. Three Palestinian prisoners, also women and minors, are to be released for every freed hostage.
Israel’s Justice Ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible to be released, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offenses.
The return of hostages could lift spirits in Israel, where their plight has gripped the country. Families of the hostages have staged mass demonstrations to pressure the government to bring them home. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it notified the families of hostages listed for release Friday.
Separately, the Israeli military dropped leaflets over southern Gaza, warning hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians who sought refuge there not to try to return to their homes in the northern half of the territory, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive. Israel has said it would block attempts to return. Despite the warning, hundreds of Palestinians were seen walking north Friday.
Israel’s northern border with Lebanon was quiet on Friday, a day after Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, an ally of Hamas, carried out the highest number of attacks in one day since fighting there began Oct. 8.
Hezbollah is not a party to the cease-fire agreement, but was widely expected to halt its attacks.
The war erupted when several thousand Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking scores of hostages, including babies, women and older adults, as well as soldiers. Hamas is expected to demand a large number of high-profile prisoners in return for soldiers.
The Israeli bombardment, now in its seventh week, has killed more than 13,300 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which resumed its detailed count of casualties in Gaza from the war. The ministry had stopped publishing casualty counts since Nov. 11, saying it had lost the ability to do so because of the health system’s collapse in the north.
The new numbers were not fully broken down, but women and minors have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead. The figures do not include updated numbers from hospitals in the north. The ministry says some 6,000 people have been reported missing, feared buried under rubble.
The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its death tolls. Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters, without presenting evidence for its count.
Israel continued to strike targets throughout the night ahead of the truce, and also destroyed stretches of tunnels and a number of tunnel shafts in the area of Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, the military said.
Earlier this week, Israel showed a tunnel and rooms that military officials said were a major Hamas hideout beneath Shifa. Hamas and hospital staff deny Israeli allegations that Shifa was used as a militant command center.
Netanyahu vowed to continue the war after the truce expires to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities, end its 16-year rule in Gaza and return all the estimated 240 captives held in Gaza by Hamas and other groups.
“We will continue it until we achieve all our goals,” Netanyahu said, adding that he had delivered the same message in a phone call to U.S. President Joe Biden. Washington has provided extensive military and diplomatic support to Israel since the start of the war.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was quoted as telling troops Thursday that their respite will be short and that the war would resume with intensity for at least two more months.
AP
