Shortly after 7 P.M. on Wednesday in Israel, Keren Marciano, a news anchor for Channel 12, announced, “This time, it’s real.” She went on, “Four hundred and sixty-seven days after the start of the war, a deal is in place for the release of hostages.”
The terms of the deal soon became public. The first phase will go into effect on Sunday, the Prime Minister of Qatar, a key mediator, announced. First, the deal must be ratified by the Israeli government—a vote is scheduled to take place before noon on Thursday. Israel will cease fire in Gaza for forty-two days. During that time, Hamas will release thirty-three hostages, among them all remaining female hostages and men over the age of fifty. Some of the released hostages will return in coffins, but a majority are reportedly alive.
Several Israeli news outlets have reported that, according to the terms of the agreement, the Israeli military will begin to withdraw from northern Gaza, and Palestinians will be able to return there, within the first three weeks of the deal’s implementation. Six hundred aid trucks will enter Gaza daily—a drastic acceleration. Israel is also expected to release more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners—the exact number will depend on how many of the hostages released by Hamas are alive. (Of the ninety-eight hostages believed to still be held in Gaza, thirty-seven have been officially declared dead.) Three living female hostages will be freed as soon as Sunday, Channel 12 reported.
In the early evening hours in Tel Aviv, people began trickling into a plaza, outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, known as Hostage Square. Online, videos appeared from al-Mawasi, the humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, which showed Gazans erupting in cheers and waving their phones upon hearing the news.
It remains unclear whether the deal will lead to a permanent ceasefire and the release of all the remaining hostages—whose names and faces are by now as familiar to Israelis as those of their own family members. Sixteen days after the first phase of the deal is implemented, negotiations are set to begin between Israel and Hamas, through their mediator Qatar, for a second and final phase. Still, more than at any previous point, fifteen months of harrowing bloodshed—since a Hamas-led force raided the border on October 7, 2023, killing twelve hundred Israelis and taking more than two hundred hostages, including children and elderly people; since Israel then struck Gaza, leading to a war that killed at least forty-six thousand Palestinians and rendered practically the entire enclave homeless—appears to be coming to an end.
The days leading up to the agreement will be pored over in the months and years to come. After all, the terms appear awfully similar to a proposal presented by President Joe Biden last May. How much of the breakthrough was the result of a drastically changed Middle East, in which Hamas finds itself suddenly cut off from its allies and backers in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran? How much of it was born of Israeli politics, with Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners apparently willing, after months of opposition, to either back the deal or not topple the government over its approval? Finally, was Donald Trump’s threat of “hell to pay” if Hamas does not free the hostages by his second Inauguration, next week, a decisive factor?
Steven Witkoff, President-elect Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, called Netanyahu’s office on Friday evening to announce that he would be arriving in Jerusalem the following afternoon, according to detailed reporting by Chaim Levinson, in the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Netanyahu’s aides reportedly told Witkoff, a billionaire real-estate investor, that the Prime Minister would gladly meet with Witkoff after the Sabbath. But Witkoff, using “salty language,” according to Levinson, insisted that Netanyahu meet him as soon as he landed. The shift in tone and demeanor seemed to catch Netanyahu unprepared. Jacob Bardugo, a political adviser to Netanyahu, conceded this week, “The pressure that Trump is exerting right now is not the kind that Israel expected.”
When the deal was announced, I was speaking on the phone with Tal Levy, whose life may now be upended. Tal’s brother Or and Or’s wife, Eynav, were among the hundreds who attended a desert rave on October 7, 2023, that ended in one of the deadliest massacres that day. Hamas terrorists killed Eynav, but Or was captured and taken hostage into Gaza. The two left behind a son, Almog, who is now three and a half and is being raised by Tal and his boyfriend, in Tel Aviv.
“I can’t believe it,” Tal kept repeating, while we spoke about the deal. He hasn’t received any information on whether his brother is among the hostages slated for release—a list has not been made public. But their family has reasons to be optimistic, Tal said. Last summer, Israel requested that Hamas release Or, among other hostages, for humanitarian reasons. Humanitarian cases are expected to be among the thirty-three hostages freed in the first phase of the deal.
“On the one hand, there’s a sense that Or is finally coming home,” Tal said. “On the other hand, we don’t know what state he will be in, both physically, but mostly—I worry—mentally.” Tal said that he was already thinking ahead to Or’s reunion with Almog. Tal and his family told Almog that his father was “far away,” and lately Tal began to feel that Almog was “angry at Or or felt that he didn’t love him,” because he did not return. Tal thought about changing their story, and confronting Almog with the news that his father was being held against his will. Just as he was talking this through with a psychotherapist, he told me, news came of a breakthrough in the negotiations. “All these months, I kept telling myself not to hope for anything because of all the disappointments,” Tal said, “but now I find myself hoping again.”
The sense of ecstatic relief currently shared by many Israelis and Palestinians will soon face reality. As Gazans begin to make their way home, they will find a decimated landscape. In Israel, excitement over the soon to be returned hostages will be cut through with deep concern over the ones left behind.
“I worry that we’re condemning some to live and others to die,” Ramos Aloni, whose two daughters and three granddaughters were captured by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz, said. They were all released in a ceasefire deal that went into effect in November, 2023. But the husband of one of Aloni’s daughters, David Cunio, is still being held by Hamas. David’s brother, Ariel, is also a hostage in Gaza. Neither is expected to be among the thirty-three hostages released.
