Israel awaits the return of a first group of hostages

The terms of the agreement, announced on Wednesday night, for the release of certain Israeli hostages held in Gaza are gradually being revealed. According to the conditions patiently negotiated between Israel and Hamas, under the leadership of the United States and Qatar, where the talks were held, they will take place within the framework of a four-day “humanitarian truce”.

This “operational pause”, as the Israeli army prefers to call it, must begin on Thursday at 10 a.m. local time, but the actual cessation of hostilities could take “some time” to be concretely implemented, warned the port -spokesperson for the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Majed al-Ansari. According to Israel, the releases will take the form of an exchange. Fifty Israelis will be returned against 150 Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israel, a ratio of 1 to 3. The exchanges must take place little by little during the four days of truce, with a minimum of 10 hostages released per day. These releases should begin “as early as Thursday,” according to an Israeli source. The exact procedure has not been revealed, but according to Hamas, “the Red Cross and the United Nations will play a role.”

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This agreement is supposed to be renewed, under the same terms, in the coming days to allow other releases. The Israeli government has already released a list of 150 prisoners for release, women (33), minors (123) as well as very young adults who, according to the authorities, “have no blood on their hands” . Hamas has not officially given any details on the identity of the hostages about to be released. These would be exclusively women and children, many of whom are among the approximately 240 people detained by Palestinian Islamists, all Israelis or binationals. According to Qatar, the agreement does not include military personnel. The United States said it hoped for the return of three compatriots, including a three-year-old child. Paris, for its part, does not seem able to confirm or not the release of French people. Antony Blinken welcomed this, stressing that the agreement is the fruit of “immense efforts by the American government”. The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, like his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, also welcomed this “deal”, which comes after more than six weeks of a murderous war.

The truce is not limited to releases. It is accompanied by an important humanitarian component as the Gaza Strip, which has been living under intense and destructive bombardments by the Israeli army since October 7, is going through an acute crisis. The population lacks everything, water, food, medicine, electricity… “At least 200 to 300 trucks will enter, including eight trucks of fuel and gas,” says Taher al-Nounou, a senior Hamas executive. But for the NGO Amnesty International, this four-day truce promises to be “insufficient” in view of the needs.

The movement also demanded and obtained a complete stop to flights of planes and, for six hours a day, of drones, used both for combat and for surveillance. The United States will also suspend the flights of its drones, Washington announced, thereby recognizing its involvement in Gaza. This suspension of overflights could allow Hamas to regroup the hostages, according to Israeli sources cited in the media, who are dispersed or in the hands of Islamic Jihad, another radical Palestinian movement. Some authorities fear that it will also serve Hamas to reunite and revive its forces.

This is one of the reasons why the blank check on this agreement gave rise to harsh and bitter discussions within the government. According to the local press, three supremacist ministers voted against, all from the party of Itamar Ben Gvir, who considers him “immoral”. Several ministers from religious Zionist parties ended up endorsing the text, like Bezalel Smotrich, not without having strongly criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the generals members of his war cabinet, collectively accused of not having been able to prevent the massacres of October 7 .

These speeches illustrate the great fragility of Netanyahu's authority, which depends on far-right parties to stay in power. The prime minister is under intense criticism from his opposition, and even from members of his own party. Aware of this weakness and the intensification of international pressure, Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed that signing this agreement was “the right decision”, while immediately resuming his martial tone. “I’ll be clear. We are at war and we will continue to be at war until we achieve all of our objectives: to eradicate Hamas, to bring back all of our hostages, and to be certain that there is no longer anyone in Gaza who threatens security. of Israel.” “We confirm that our hands will remain on the trigger,” Hamas, for its part, warned.