Israel, Hamas agree to ceasefire deal to pause war in Gaza

Annmarie Hordern, Fiona MacDonald, Bloomberg News on Jan 15, 2025

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Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire deal that will release dozens of hostages and bring a temporary halt to the war in the Gaza Strip that has killed tens of thousands of people in the last 15 months and touched off broader turmoil across the Middle East.

The ceasefire will start Sunday and last six weeks, Qatari and U.S. officials said. Thirty-three hostages captured after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 will be released, while Israel will withdraw from populated areas of the Gaza Strip and release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump, whose envoy was involved in the latest conversations, both took credit for the deal. Trump said it could have only happened with his November election victory, even though he has yet to take office, while Biden said it was the result of painstaking American diplomacy.

The agreement would pause fighting that has all but destroyed Gaza, a strip of land on the Mediterranean coast controlled by Hamas and home to more than 2 million people. A truce will also lead to an increase in humanitarian aid to the territory, Biden said.

“During the next six weeks, Israel will negotiate the necessary arrangements to get to phase two, which is a permanent end of the war,” Biden said in a speech from the White House. He was flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In a last-minute wrinkle, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that several details still needed to be worked out and a deal hadn’t been finalized. But Qatari and U.S. officials went ahead and declared the ceasefire anyway. Hamas said in a statement the deal was the result of “the legendary resilience of our great Palestinian people.”

Word of the ceasefire sparked celebrations on the streets in the Gaza Strip and offered at least tentative hope of a letup in violence. The conflict has caused turmoil in the wider Middle East, with Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas. Israel stepped up an offensive against Hezbollah in September, killing the top leadership and severely degrading the group in a ground and aerial campaign that ended with a truce in late November.

Israel’s response also sparked a backlash, with a United Nations special envoy saying there were reasonable grounds to conclude that the country had committed genocide. Rights groups including Amnesty International came to the same conclusion — an argument that Israel and the U.S. rejected.

Even so, the U.S. and other Group of Seven nations repeatedly urged Netanyahu to do more to protect civilians in Gaza, over whose plight the Israeli leader is wanted on charges of war crimes before the International Criminal Court.

The ceasefire comes more then a year after a week-long truce in November 2023 under which more than 100 hostages were released in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees. Since then, Israeli forces have overrun much of Gaza in their bid to destroy Hamas as both a military and governing force. Hamas hold-outs have managed to keep fighting in some parts of the enclave.

The Houthis have all but shut the southern Red Sea to Western ships with persistent missile and drone attacks, while Iran and Israel briefly exchanged direct fire in April and October.

Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are all designated terrorist organizations by the U.S. and many other countries.

Hamas triggered the conflict by attacking Israel in surprise raids on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage. More than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent Israeli military campaign, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, while much of the territory’s urban centers have been destroyed. Israel, which has lost hundreds of soldiers to the fighting, says it has killed around 20,000 Palestinian gunmen in Gaza.

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With assistance from Alisa Odenheimer, Dan Williams, Iain Marlow and Akayla Gardner.