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As the sun set over Israel and Palestine, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, gave a press conference, announcing that, after weeks of negotiations in Doha, the two parties had agreed to a ceasefire. The deal is expected to take effect on Sunday, he said; there are still some logistics being ironed out, and Israel’s cabinet would vote on the deal in the morning. Joe Biden followed the briefing with his own: “This deal was developed and negotiated under my administration,” he said, “but its terms will be implemented, for the most part, by the next administration.” Later, Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, gave a broadcast address, calling upon his country’s leadership to accept the terms: “Let’s bring our sons and daughters home.” Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, thanked Donald Trump for assuring him that “Gaza will never be a haven for terror.” Across the region, all eyes were glued to the news.
In Gaza, the announcement precipitated scenes of jubilation. While the camera rolled, Anas Al-Sharif, a journalist for Al Jazeera, removed his protective gear, surrounded by a huddle of cheering men. “I can finally take off this helmet, which has exhausted me throughout this period,” he said. “And this vest, which has become part of my body for so long, always accompanying me.” The men lifted Al-Sharif into the air. “I remember my colleague Ismail Al-Ghoul, who would have been standing in my place to announce this news,” he said. “We miss Ismail Al-Ghoul. We miss Rami Al-Rifi. We miss our colleagues Samer Abu Daqah and Hamza Al Dahdouh.” All four journalists were killed in Israeli strikes while covering the war.
The mood in Tel Aviv was hopeful, if perhaps more subdued, as people gathered in a part of the city center that has, since the start of the war, become known as “Hostages Square,” for its concentration of memorials and tributes. Israeli media reflected a cautious optimism. On Channel 12, the most widely viewed broadcast network, a presenter named Danny Kushmaro read out the terms of the deal on the eight o’clock news: beginning on Sunday, thirty-three hostages will be released—“the majority of them alive,” he said. Kushmaro detailed the number of Palestinian prisoners who would be released in exchange: “One thousand Palestinian prisoners, men and women, under the age of nineteen will be released. They include terrorists, murderers, and prisoners serving a life sentence.” The second phase of the agreement, planned to begin in about two weeks, he said, will “with great hope” see the return of the rest of the living hostages. He added a note of caution: Hamas, he said, “is a murderous terrorist organization, and it’s difficult to have faith in it.” On Channel 13, another commercial news broadcast station, Lior Kenan shared a similar sentiment: “Until it’s done, it’s not done,” she said.
“There’s no euphoria,” Judah Ari Gross—a former reporter for the Times of Israel, now an editor at eJewishPhilanthropy, which covers Israel and the Jewish world—told me. “This is not ‘All the hostages are being released now and everyone gets to breathe a sigh of relief.’” That, he said, is still many steps away. There is significant concern about what Israel is giving up in return. “Israelis have seen this before, and they’ve seen some of those Palestinian prisoners, such as Yahyah Sinwar, go on to do horrifying things,” he told me. Sinwar, the Hamas leader who spearheaded the planning of the October 7 attack, was one of more than a thousand prisoners released in 2011 in exchange for an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped and brought to Gaza. “The general mood is that this is sort of a necessary step, but I don’t know anyone who is thrilled,” Gross said.
Chen Liberman, a journalist for Channel 12’s Uvda (“fact”)—Israel’s version of 60 Minutes—told me that social media quickly lit up with political commentary about the deal. “Even in this very happy, joyful moment, there’s still all these pro- and anti-Bibi arguments about who gets the credit, who doesn’t get the credit,” she said. Mostly, though, the focus is on the hostages: “Finally things are happening,” she said.
Abed Abu Shehadeh—the host of Al-Midan, a popular Arabic-language podcast that caters to Palestinian citizens of Israel—said that feelings within his community are mixed. “People are happy. There’s a sense of relief,” he told me. Even so, “there’s this realization that it’s a new chapter in the Palestinian consciousness, especially in Gaza.” It will take time, he said, before the Palestinian community is able to process the destruction of the past fifteen months. “We’re just now realizing what happened.”
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