By Mayan Lubell and Nidal Al-Mughrabi
JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a ceasefire in Gaza, set to begin at 0630 GMT on Sunday, would not begin until the Palestinian militant group Hamas released a list of hostages to be released.
Netanyahu’s announcement comes one hour before the ceasefire deadline. The release of the hostages was expected within hours of a ceasefire that would pave the way for a possible end to the 15-month war that has torn the Middle East apart.
“The Prime Minister has instructed the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) that the ceasefire, which is due to take effect at 8:30 a.m., will not begin until Israel receives the list of released abductees that Hamas has promised to deliver.” said on Sunday.
On Sunday, Hamas reaffirmed its commitment to the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, saying the delay in releasing the names of the hostages in the first stage was due to “technical field reasons”.
Israeli forces began withdrawing from Rafah in the Gaza Strip toward the Philadelphia Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border, Hamas propaganda media reported early Sunday.
Israel’s military has warned Gaza residents not to approach its troops or move into Palestinian territory until the cease-fire deadline, adding that when movement is allowed “an announcement and instructions on safe transit methods will be issued.”
The cease-fire agreement follows months of negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States and comes ahead of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump on January 20.
A three-phase ceasefire will take effect at 0630 GMT on Sunday.
Its first phase will last six weeks, during which 33 of the remaining 98 hostages – women, children, men over 50, the sick and wounded – will be freed from nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
They include 737 men, women and teenage prisoners, some of whom are members of militant groups convicted of attacks that have killed dozens of Israelis, as well as hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza who have been held since the war began.
The three female hostages are expected to be released Sunday afternoon through the Red Cross in exchange for 30 prisoners each.
After the release of the hostages on Sunday, lead US negotiator Brett McGurk said the deal called for the release of four more female hostages seven days later, followed by the release of three more every seven days.
During the first phase, the Israeli army will withdraw from some positions in Gaza, and Palestinians displaced from areas north of Gaza will be allowed to return.
US President Joe Biden’s team worked closely with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to finalize the deal.
As his inauguration approached, Trump reiterated his demand that the deal be completed quickly and repeatedly warned that “hell will pay” if the hostages were not released.
Post-war Gaza?
But what comes next for Gaza remains unclear in the absence of a comprehensive agreement on the enclave’s post-war future, which would take billions of dollars and years of work to rebuild.
And while the stated goal of the cease-fire is to end the war entirely, it can easily fall apart.
Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, survived despite losing its top leadership and thousands of fighters.
Israel has vowed not to allow Hamas to return to power and has cleared a large swath of territory in Gaza, widely seen as a move to create a buffer zone that will allow its troops to operate freely against threats from the enclave.
The return of the hostages to Israel could ease public anger against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government over the Oct. 7 security failure that led to the deadliest day in the country’s history.
But hardliners in his government have already threatened to quit unless the war with Hamas is renewed, putting him at odds with Washington’s desire to see an end to the war between him and his far-right political allies.
And if the war resumes, dozens of hostages could remain in Gaza.
Middle East shock waves
Outside Gaza, the war has sent shock waves throughout the region, sparking a war with the Tehran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement and bringing Israel into direct conflict with its arch-enemy Iran for the first time.
More than a year later, the Middle East has been transformed. Iran, which has spent billions building a network of armed groups around Israel, has seen its “axis of resistance” crumbled and failed to inflict more than minimal damage on Israel in two major missile attacks.
Hezbollah, whose vast missile arsenal was once considered the greatest threat to Israel, has been humiliated, its top leadership killed and most of its missiles and military infrastructure destroyed.
In the aftermath, Assad’s decade-long regime in Syria fell, removing another key Iranian ally and leaving Israel’s military virtually unchallenged in the region.
But on the diplomatic front, Israel has faced outrage and isolation over the death and destruction in Gaza.
Netanyahu faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant at the International Court of Justice on war crimes and separate charges of genocide.
Israel has reacted angrily to both cases, dismissing the charges as politically motivated and accusing South Africa, which brought the original ICJ case, as well as acceding countries, of anti-Semitism.
The war was sparked by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures. Since then, more than 400 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in Gaza.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians, Israel’s 15-month campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 47,000 Palestinians, leaving the narrow coastal enclave a wasteland of rubble.
Health officials say most of the dead are civilians. Israel says more than a third are fighters.