A deal has been reached to release 50 women and children that were kidnapped by Hamas and is set to go into effect sometime on Thursday, following intensive international negotiations over the course of a month and a half, according to U.S. officials and the Israeli government.
Israel and Hamas agreed to implement a temporary cease-fire for four days to allow for the safe transfer of hostages and the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. The release of hostages is expected to trigger the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, per a Hamas demand.
The U.S. believes that there are more children and women beyond the 50 that Hamas had identified for release, with a senior U.S. administration official telling reporters in a call on Tuesday night that Hamas has not been able to provide a comprehensive list of all the people who were kidnapped from Israel.
The U.S. expects Hamas to work throughout the pause in fighting to identify additional women and children to be released.
“The deal is now structured for women and children in the first phase, but with an expectation for further releases and the aim, the clear aim, is to bring all hostages home to their families,” the official said.
The cessation of fighting, what the administration is calling a “humanitarian pause,” can be extended beyond the four days if Hamas identifies and shows a willingness to release more hostages.
The Israeli government early Wednesday morning, local time, said in a statement that “the release of every additional 10 hostages will result in one additional day of the pause.”
Hamas kidnapped more than 200 people on Oct. 7 as part of its unprecedented terrorist attack against Israel — where at least 1,200 people were massacred, the vast majority civilians.
Along with women and children, other hostages include men, Israeli soldiers, dual nationals and foreign nationals. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) earlier this week released a video that it said showed Hamas forcibly moving at least two hostages, a Thai civilian and a Nepalese civilian, through al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip.
At least three Americans are expected to be released in the first phase of the deal, including two women and a three-year-old girl, Liz Hirsh Naftali, whose parents were killed amid Hamas’s assault on their community of Kfar Azza. Naftali is believed to be turning four this month.
The Biden administration has said there are 10 unaccounted for Americans, but has not said that they are all confirmed as hostages.
The pause in fighting is also expected to allow for humanitarian aid deliveries to be scaled up through the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, with thousands of Palestinians having been displaced from the north of Gaza to the south amid intense Israeli air bombardment as part of its war aim to eliminate Hamas. Civilians are lacking adequate access to water, food, medicine, shelter and more necessities and what international aid organizations have decried as a desperate humanitarian crisis.
Brett McGurk, Middle East Coordinator for the National Security Council, had earlier said that Hamas’s “bargain” for releasing the hostages was to increase aid to the strip.
Among the other terms Hamas asked Israel to agree to, include allowing Palestinian women and minors held in Israeli jails to be released to their hometowns, mostly in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the Times of Israel reported, citing an Israeli government source speaking with reporters.
The deal was reached through intensive mediation by the government of Qatar and Egypt, which served as intermediaries between Hamas military leaders hiding out in Gaza, to their political offices in Doha, Qatar, and on to U.S. and Israeli officials.
The senior U.S. official, who spoke with reporters on Tuesday, said a secret cell working to secure the release of hostages was established shortly after Hamas’s attack on Israel, and the extent of its kidnapping of civilians began to unfold.
Qatar initiated discussions with Israel and the U.S. to work toward the hostages’ release.
Calls between the U.S., Israel, Qatar and Egypt have taken place daily, sometimes hourly over the course of the month and a half of the ordeal, with Biden “directly and personally engaged in this process,” the official said.
“In fact, I just came from the Oval Office about half an hour ago… We are cautiously optimistic here that we are in the final stages of what has been an extremely excruciating five-week process.”
The deal marks an extraordinary development in the war between Israel and Hamas nearly seven weeks since Hamas shocked the world by breaking down and through Israel’s barrier with the Gaza Strip. Hamas fighters massacred and murdered civilians in their homes, at a music festival, and on the street under the cover of rocketfire across Israel in an attack they have failed to fully explain, other than what they view as their ultimate goal as to destroy the state of Israel.
Among the more than 200 kidnapped from southern Israel during Hamas’s terrorist attack include Israeli civilians, soldiers and people of dozens of other nationalities taken by Hamas, and some are also believed to have been taken by other designated terror groups, like Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Gazan civilians.
White House National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday that the U.S. does not have a full accounting of the exact number of hostages and who is holding them.
“I think it’s important to remember that other groups also likely hold some hostages… that Hamas may not have access to, or even immediate knowledge of with any great specificity,” he said during a call with reporters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to end Hamas, and Israel has carried out a punishing air campaign across the Gaza Strip, targeting what they said are Hamas combatants and their military infrastructure. But the devastation has led to the death of approximately 13,000 people — according to estimates provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is under control of Hamas.
While Hamas does not disclose how many of those killed are its own members, more than 5,000 children are believed to be among those killed, and a senior U.S. official has said it is likely the death toll is higher than is currently being reported.
And Israel alleges that rocketfire from Gaza — by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad or others — has at times fallen back on the strip into civilian areas.
Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel would not abandon its war against Hamas, even as it agreed to a pause to allow for the release of hostages.
President Biden has backed Israel’s military campaign into the Gaza Strip, saying that he supports Israel’s goal of dismantling Hamas’s military infrastructure to prevent the terror group from being able to carry out, again, an attack like that which occurred on Oct 7.
But the president and his senior officials have increasingly raised concern that Israel can do more to protect civilian life in Gaza.
Kirby, on a call with reporters on Tuesday, said that the administration has said they don’t support an expanded Israeli military ground campaign into southern Gaza “absent a cohesive plan by the Israelis to factor in how they’re going to be able to protect what is now mathematically a dramatically increased civilian population.”
“It’s even more incumbent upon the Israelis to make sure, before they begin operations down there, that they have factored in ways in which they can protect those civilians who moved at their urging to the South,” Kirby continued. “And I think that’s really about where I need to leave it.”