Israel has agreed to a sixty-day ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, news agency Reuters reports on Friday. Hamas is still studying the proposal and will respond on Friday or Saturday.
The White House reported on Thursday that Israel had agreed to a plan for a temporary ceasefire. The plan was presented by US envoy Steve Witkoff. Reuters has reviewed the proposal and reports that the ceasefire should last sixty days.
Furthermore, a prisoner exchange is proposed. 28 Israeli hostages would be released in exchange for 1,236 Palestinian prisoners and the bodies of 180 killed Palestinians. There would still be 58 Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip, of whom an estimated twenty are still alive.
Once Hamas gives the green light, humanitarian aid will be allowed back into Gaza. Currently, Israel is making it extremely difficult for aid organizations to enter the Gaza Strip. The UN emergency relief organization (OCHA) reports on Friday that Gaza is currently “the hungriest place on earth”. There is also a huge shortage of medical supplies.
A spokesperson for OCHA explains that six to nine hundred trucks are ready at the border with Gaza to provide assistance. But complicated security procedures prevent them from crossing the border. “Only flour can be admitted now,” says the spokesperson. “You can’t eat that as it is, can you? It has to be baked. 100 percent of the population in Gaza is at risk of famine.”
Israel has violated a ceasefire before
The American plan also states that Hamas will release the remaining thirty hostages after the first temporary ceasefire. Then the temporary ceasefire will become permanent and Israel will gradually withdraw all its troops from the Gaza Strip.
It is very questionable whether this is feasible in the short term. Hamas and Israel have had very different conditions for peace since the outbreak of the large-scale war in the autumn of 2023. For example, Israel demands that Hamas be completely dismantled as a military and administrative force. Hamas is not prepared to give up its weapons and wants Israel to withdraw all its troops from Gaza.
A ceasefire agreed earlier this year was violated by Israel in March.
The war in Gaza broke out after a bloody attack by Hamas on southern Israel, in which twelve hundred people were killed. Israel then started a large-scale war in Gaza, in which, according to Palestinian authorities, more than 54,000 people have been killed so far.