After 15 months of war that began with a brutal attack on Israel by Hamas and ended with much of the Gaza Strip leveled by Israel, a ceasefire came into effect on Sunday that saw three women hostages released from Gaza and 90 Palestinians freed from Israeli jails in return. For two tense hours on Sunday morning, the ceasefire looked as though it might falter from the very outset. Hamas failed to provide the names of the three hostages it planned to release, prompting Israel to postpone the ceasefire and continue its air strikes on Gaza. In what should have been the first hours of peace, from 08:30 local time (06:30 GMT), at least 19 Palestinians were killed by the strikes and 36 more were wounded, the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had struck "a number of terror targets". The three hostages' names were eventually sent by Hamas to Israel, via an intermediary, and Israeli military action in Gaza ceased for the first time since a brief, week-long ceasefire and hostage exchange back in November 2023. At 11:19, Majed al-Ansari, the spokesman for the foreign ministry of Qatar, which has helped broker the ceasefire deal, wrote on X that the final obstacles had been cleared "and thus the ceasefire has begun". Six hours later, three Israeli hostages – Romi Gonen, 24, Doron Steinbrecher, 31, and Emily Damari, 28, who is a dual British citizen – were handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross in Gaza and then to the Israeli military. TV coverage showed chaotic scenes in Gaza City's Saraya Square as crowds massed around the vehicle carrying the hostages and Hamas fighters struggled to push the people back. There was a brief glimpse of the three women as they were taken from the van, amid the surging crowds. From the handover point in Gaza they were driven by the IDF to the nearby Re'im military base in southern Israel to be met by their mothers. Extensive planning by the IDF had gone into the delicate handover, with military medics and psychologists readied for the first stages of the process at a reception centre designed to ease the hostages' transition. From Re'im, they were transferred by helicopter to the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv to be reunited with their wider families and receive further medical attention. Two of the three reportedly suffered gunshot wounds in the attack on 7 October 2023, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostage. The release was the first of several due to take place over the next six weeks – if the ceasefire holds – until a total of 33 hostages have been returned and about 1,900 Palestinians have been freed in exchange. Ninety-seven hostages are still in captivity, Israeli authorities said, though dozens of those are presumed dead. In Gaza, where the health ministry says more than 46,900 people have been killed during Israel's offensive and the majority of the strip's pre-war population of 2.3 million has been displaced, many civilians yearning for home learned over the weekend that their long wait would continue. The IDF, which should withdraw its troops from populated areas during the first phase of the deal, warned civilians on Sunday not to approach the buffer zone it had created along Gaza's borders or the military zone in central Gaza, known as the Netzarim corridor, which cuts the north of the territory from the south. It was expected to be a week before some displaced people in the south can cross the corridor and move back to their homes in the north. Reuters Hostage Emily Damari, an Israeli-British citizen, with her mother Mandy at an Israeli military base on Sunday after being releasedReuters Hostage Emily Damari with her mother Mandy after being released. Damari was shot in the hand during the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 For civilians who have spent 15 months in desperate conditions in tents and makeshift shelters in Gaza, suffering from malnutrition and disease, the relief of the long-awaited peace was tempered by the immense scale of the destruction and loss. "By God, the feelings are mixed," said Helen Jabri, 41, in a phone interview from a shelter in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. "Our hearts are aching for the people we have lost," she said. "My brother and his entire family were lost. My father is a prisoner. We are very happy that the torrent of blood has stopped, but there is pain here in every house." Some began packing up and moving on foot Gaza on Sunday, particularly from the most southern areas including Rafah. But it will be a long time before any sense of home or normalcy can be returned to the vast numbers of displaced. The northern parts of the strip, including Gaza City, have been subjected in places to almost total destruction during the war. The UN's satellite agency estimates that 60% of structures across Gaza have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli strikes and demolitions, meaning many displaced will have to remain for now in shelters or continue sleeping rough, prolonging a massive humanitarian crisis. "The vast majority of shelters are overcrowded and many are simply living out in the open or in makeshift structures," said Juliette Touma, communications director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa. "They lack basic needs like warm clothes. I would not call these living conditions, they are not conditions fit for human beings." Noura Zakout, a ministry of education employee from Gaza City, told the BBC from a shelter in Khan Younis on Sunday that she would return to the city at the first opportunity "no matter the destruction and ruin". "I just want to go to the city and smell its air," she said. "We know we have no home to go back to, but at least now with this ceasefire we can take a breath. Like a diver who goes deep underwater, we have come up for a moment for air." In Israel, the finalizing of the first part of the deal brought relief for three hostage families after 15 months of pain. Video footage released late on Sunday night showed joyous, tearful reunions at the medical center near Tel Aviv. In a statement, Mandy Damari said her daughter's "nightmare in Gaza was over" and thanked "everyone who never stopped fighting for Emily". For others, it brought another prolonging of uncertainty. Thirty-three hostages will be released in the first phase but their condition is not known and some are reported to have been killed. Among the remaining hostages, only two children are left - brothers Kfir and Ariel Bibas, aged two and four. The boys were kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October 2023 alongside their parents Sheri and Yarden. Hamas announced in December 2023 that Sheri and the boys had been killed, but Israeli authorities have never confirmed the deaths. "It scares me to hope," Yarden's cousin Eylon Keshet said, on Saturday night, on what would be Kfir's second birthday. "I'm not letting myself truly imagine it, because when I start to imagine it I feel like my stomach turning," he said. Seeing Shiri and the boys alive would, he said, be "a miracle". Daniel Lifschitz, whose grandfather Oded is the second-oldest hostage, at 84, said on Sunday it was "wonderful to see the beginning of the ceasefire". "We are getting closer to the day when we might see my grandfather," he said. "But at the same time, today has been very very hard, because we don't know whether he is dead or alive. We don't know whether to prepare for a funeral or a festival." In exchange for the three hostages released on Sunday, Israel's prison service released 90 Palestinians from Ofer detention center in the occupied West Bank early on Monday. They were also handed over to the Red Cross, before being taken to a designated area from where they will be allowed to return home. In the nearby West Bank town of Beitunia, crowds gathered to wait for the prisoners, with some starting fires to create roadblocks. For families in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, there is still great concern that the fragile ceasefire could collapse over the next six weeks. The delays on Sunday morning were quickly overcome, but a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that Israel "retains the right to continue our war aims" in Gaza if the conditions of the deal are broken again. In Israel on Sunday, several far-right ministers resigned in protest over the terms of the deal, further weakening Netanyahu's already fragile hold on government. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the deal's most prominent critic, has long objected to the ceasefire, saying it comes ahead of Israel's main war aim of destroying Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He declared on Sunday that his far-right Jewish Power party would resign en masse from the government. Though he pledged not to attempt to overthrow the government, the move leaves the embattled prime minister with just a razor-thin majority in parliament. Speaking at a news conference on Sunday, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he would not speak against those who had objected to the deal, which he said brought a "heavy price for Israel". "Any agreement with a terror organisation is a bad event," he said. "Releasing terrorists from our jails is a heavy price, with risks." Saar acknowledged that there had been a "very serious debate within government" about the terms of the deal. "But we are doing it because of our commitment to our brothers and sisters who are under captivity for more than 15 months already. We will do our utmost to release them." The BBC understands that under an agreement with Israel, control of checkpoints in Gaza previously manned by the Israeli military would be handed over to Hamas police, which will manage the flow of displaced people north as Israel withdraws. The arrangement raises questions about how fighters will be prevented from also moving north, and there are fears of chaos as a mass of people moves and attempts to access aid entering the strip. Aid lorries began entering Gaza on Thursday 15 minutes after the ceasefire came into effect. But the scale of the need is enormous. Even before the conflict, Gaza was heavily dependent on aid. With farmland and food infrastructure destroyed, Unwra has said 600 lorries should cross into Gaza every day. Majed al-Ansari, the Qatari foreign ministry spokesman, told the BBC that a dedicated operations centre in Cairo would monitor the ceasefire from abroad, to try and make sure there was a "minimum level of chaos as a result of aid going in". But he added that for the first phase, Hamas would essentially be in charge of the process in Gaza. Ansari described the deal as the "last chance for Gaza, and the last chance for the region". "This is the deal for hope, this is the deal for the future, this is a deal for all of us collectively," he said. US President-elect Donald Trump, whose envoy Steve Witkoff helped broker the deal alongside President Joe Biden's team, welcomed the ceasefire in a post on his social media site Truth Social. "Hostages starting to come out today! Three wonderful young women will be first," he wrote. In Gaza City on Sunday night, Abdallah Shabbir, a young emergency doctor who had worked relentlessly since the day the war began, seeing hundreds of dead and treating thousands of wounded, was allowing himself a small moment of joy. "It is only because these were my people I was able to keep going," he said. "I don't know how to express the feeling I have now, but there is joy. The most important thing is that the bloodshed has stopped. God willing, everything else will follow." — BBC
