Israel and the terrorist group Hamas, which have fought for more than 15 months in the Gaza Strip following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, now have a hostages-for-prisoners swap and temporary cease-fire agreement on the table.
If all goes well, it will take effect on Jan. 19, a day before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated and U.S. President Joe Biden leaves office. They each announced the deal on Jan. 15. Trump did so in a social media post and Biden in a public statement and then a White House speech.
Both men’s teams worked intensively in the days leading to the deal, which was forged in Doha, Qatar, one of three mediating nations along with the United States and Egypt.
But the deal is not yet final, and there appear to be last-minute snags. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Jan. 15 that he would meet with his security Cabinet on Jan. 16 to vote on the proposal. But his office said on the morning of Jan. 16 that the meeting had been postponed.
“Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators and Israel in an effort to extort last-minute concessions,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
Hamas on Jan. 15 accused Israel of making new demands that caused a delay.
Terms of the Deal
Netanyahu’s office has said it won’t discuss the terms until the deal is final. Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, said on Jan. 15 that the first of three planned phases would include the release of 33 hostages being held by Hamas for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.Al Thani said those hostages would include civilian women, female soldiers, children, elderly people, and civilians who are ill or wounded. He did not specify whether all of the hostages would be living. Israel has sought the return of dead hostages’ bodies. Hamas is believed to be holding 98 hostages, living or dead. Israel estimates that a third of those are dead.
According to Basem Naim of Hamas, the terrorist group would release three female Israeli civilian hostages on the first day of the cease-fire and four more on the seventh day. After that, Hamas would release three Israeli “detainees” every seven days, starting with women civilians and soldiers.
US Hostages
Trump has threatened “all [expletive] to pay” if the hostages, particularly the U.S. citizens among them, aren’t released by Jan. 20. He has declined to elaborate on what that meant.
Two U.S. citizens held hostage, Keith Siegel and Sagui Dekel-Chen, are expected to be included in the first group of hostages designated for release, a senior administration official said on Jan. 15.
Siegel qualified because he is an older male and Dekel-Chen because he was shot and wounded on Oct. 7, 2023. Siegel’s wife, Aviva Siegel, was released by Hamas in November 2023. Also believed to be alive is 21-year-old Edan Alexander. He is an Israeli American who was captured while serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Soldiers will probably be released last.
The Deal’s Reception
Israelis see the deal at best as a mixed bag. It allows for hostage return but meanwhile releases many Palestinian prisoners convicted of acts of terror going back years or decades.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in a statement called it a “great victory” for the Palestinian resistance. Yemen’s Houthis, who have attacked Israel as well as international and U.S. naval shipping, said Israel had “failed miserably” in the Gaza Strip.
Civilians in both the Gaza Strip and Israel awaited developments with trepidation, fearing last-minute snags delaying peace on the Gaza side and hostage release on the Israeli side.
Netanyahu’s Cabinet
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has said he will vote against the deal and has threatened to pull his nationalist Otzma Yehudit party out of Netanyahu’s coalition if it goes through.Ben Gvir’s frequent Cabinet ally, Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, earlier expressed opposition to the deal without threatening to leave the coalition over it. On the evening of Jan. 15, though, his Religious Zionism party did make that threat.
Smotrich said he demanded, as a condition for remaining in the government, “total certainty of a return to war with great force, in full capacity, and in a new fashion until full victory in all its components, led by the destruction of the terror organization Hamas and the return of all hostages to their homes.”
Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli, a Cabinet member from Netanyahu’s own Likud Party, has threatened to quit if the deal includes a withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor, which Israel occupies along the Gaza–Egypt border to prevent arms smuggling to the Gaza Strip.
