The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Israel’s cabinet is expected to decide on approving the ceasefire and hostage-release deal with Hamas that negotiators hammered out earlier this week following months of mediated talks.
According to the Associated Press, a meeting of Israel’s cabinet began on Friday (January 17) evening to consider the deal. It is likely to approve the agreement, the news agency added.
Hours earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced that the security cabinet had recommended that the government green-light the deal.
If the deal is finalised, a ceasefire will begin on Sunday (January 19) at 12:15 local time for an initial period of six weeks. Israel will start to withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip. Both sides will also release prisoners.
Humanitarian aid corridors that are currently blocked will be opened up to aid organisations entering the Gaza Strip.
During the first phase of the ceasefire, Hamas will release 33 hostages – whom it took during its October 7, 2023 terror attack – to Israel: first all the remaining women and children, then men aged over 50. The first three hostages are expected to be freed on Sunday.
At this point, 98 of the more than 250 kidnapped hostages are still held by Hamas. It is unclear how many are still alive. To date, 36 hostages have been declared dead, while more than 110 have been either freed or released alive.
In return for the release of the hostages, Israel will release Palestinian prisoners: 30 for each civilian hostage and 50 for each female soldier. Some of the Palestinian prisoners released will be Hamas fighters, but no one who took part in the October 7 attack will be included in the exchange.
The AFP news agency reported on Friday evening that Israel’s justice ministry published a list of 95 Palestinian prisoners who would be released on Sunday in exchange for Israeli hostages provided the cabinet approves the deal.
US President Joe Biden and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani on Wednesday announced that Israel and Hamas had struck a ceasefire and hostage-release agreement. The Hamas-affiliated Shehab news agency also cited the Gazan group as affirming the deal.
However, Netanyahu’s office had at the time said a deal was still in the works and some final details were still being ironed out, as per the Associated Press. It reportedly later accused Hamas of going back on certain agreements in an attempt to gain more concessions.
But it said in a press release early on Friday that Netanyahu was “updated by the negotiating team that agreements [had] been reached on a deal for the release of the hostages”.
The security cabinet was later cited as recommending approval of the deal “following an evaluation of all diplomatic, security and humanitarian aspects, and while understanding that the proposed deal supports the achievement of the objectives of the war”.
The trigger for the war was Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack in Israel, in which it killed around 1,200 Israelis and took over 250 others hostage. Over 100 of these hostages were released during an initial, week-long ceasefire in November 2023.
Israel’s retribution for the attack in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, health authorities in the territory have said.
With inputs from DW.