US President Donald Trump, Israel and Hamas announced early Thursday that a deal had been reached between the latter two to secure the release of the remaining hostages held captive in Gaza and end the two-year war in the ravaged Strip.
Not all the details have been finalized, and many others have not been made public, but the main reported details about the agreement, based on Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war, follow.
A top official within Hamas told AFP that Israel would release nearly 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for around 20 living hostages as part of the deal. The figure includes 250 terror convicts serving life sentences and 1,700 others detained since the start of the war.
The exchange should take place within 72 hours of the implementation of the deal, which was also “agreed with Palestinian factions,” another source within Hamas said.
That means that the release of all the living hostages should take place by Monday, but possibly sooner.
According to the Walla news site, the prisoners released will not include notable terrorists Marwan Barghouti, Ahmad Sa’adat, Hassan Salameh or Abbas al-Sayed, whose releases Hamas sought.
Likewise, Hamas terrorists who took part in the October 7, 2023, onslaught on Israel will not be released, the report said.
Bodies of around 28 hostages held captive in Gaza will be released in the second stage, reports said, and are not expected to all be returned at once. Hebrew media reported that not all bodies were accounted for as of Thursday morning, and that it could take time to locate some.
Israel will return 15 Palestinian bodies for every one it receives.
Another Saudi channel, Al-Hadath, reported on Thursday that the 72-hour countdown for the release of hostages would begin after Israeli troops withdraw to the agreed-upon lines in Gaza, which would take place once the deal was ratified by Israel.
Hebrew media reports said Israel will remain in control of 53 percent of the Gaza Strip until all the hostages are released.
Earlier, a senior Palestinian source told Qatar’s Al Jazeera that the mediators had accepted Palestinian maps showing an Israeli withdrawal from deep inside Gaza’s cities before the start of the release.
The deal stipulates “scheduled withdrawals” of Israeli troops, the top Hamas official told AFP, and includes “guarantees from President Trump and the mediators.”
The Palestinian source cited by A-Sharq said that under the agreement, Israeli forces would withdraw from the Rafah crossing and its vicinity, and the deal also includes the transfer of Palestinian patients and wounded to Egypt for treatment, and the Rafah crossing will be opened in both directions once the agreement goes into effect.
A daily minimum of 400 trucks of aid will enter the Gaza Strip for the first five days of the ceasefire, to be increased in the following days, according to the second Hamas source speaking to AFP.
It also provides for the “return of displaced persons from the south of the Gaza Strip to Gaza [City] and the north immediately,” they added.
The first stages are two of the 20-step plan proposed by Trump, designed to ensure the return of all hostages held by terrorist organizations in Gaza and a permanent end to the Israel-Hamas war in the enclave.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Among the bodies held by Hamas is an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.
Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March 2024, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May 2024 as a “gesture” to the United States. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gaza terror suspects detained during the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 51 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, along with the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.