Qatar and the United States said that Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) have agreed to a ceasefire agreement with Israel after more than 460 days of war that devastated Gaza.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman bin Jassim Al Thani said on Wednesday that the ceasefire agreement will enter into force on Sunday, but added that work on implementation steps with Israel and Hamas continues. Israel says some final details remain in place, and an Israeli government vote is expected on Thursday.

Israel was killed More than 46 thousand Palestinians Since its war on the enclave began in October 2023.

The agreement includes a temporary ceasefire that would end, for the time being, the devastation in Gaza, as well as the release of prisoners held in Gaza and many prisoners held by Israel. The deal will also finally allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes – although many homes no longer exist after Israel’s deliberate campaign of destruction.

The first stage

The initial phase will last six weeks and will include a limited prisoner exchange, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and increased aid to the Strip.

33 Israeli prisoners, including women, children and civilians over the age of 50 – who were captured during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, will be released. In return, Israel will release a larger number of Palestinian prisoners during this phase, Including prisoners serving life sentences. Among the released Palestinians were about 1,000 who were arrested after October 7.

In conjunction with the prisoner exchange, Israel will withdraw its forces from population centers in Gaza to areas no larger than 700 meters within Gaza’s borders with Israel. But that would exclude the Netzarim Corridor, the military belt that divides the Strip and controls movement along it – and the withdrawal from Netzarim is instead expected to take place in stages.

Israel will allow civilians to return to their homes in the besieged northern enclave, aid agencies warn Famine may have taken hold Allowing up to 600 trucks per day to flow into the enclave.

Israel will also allow wounded Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip to receive treatment, and open the Rafah crossing with Egypt seven days after the implementation of the first phase begins.

Israeli forces will work to reduce their presence in the Philadelphia Corridor, the border area between Egypt and Gaza, and then withdraw completely no later than the fiftieth day after the agreement enters into force.

What happens after the first stage?

Details of phases two and three, although understood to have been agreed in principle, will be negotiated during phase one. US President Joe Biden said that the ceasefire will continue even if negotiations on the second and third phases exceed the first six weeks of the first phase.

Crucially, Israel insisted on providing no written guarantees to rule out resuming its attacks once the first phase was completed and the civilian prisoners returned.

However, according to an Egyptian source cited by the Associated Press news agency, the three mediators involved in the talks – Egypt, Qatar and the United States – have given Hamas verbal assurances that the negotiations will continue and that the three will push for an agreement that will see the second and third phases implemented before the expiry of an initial period of six months. Weeks.

What is planned for the second phase?

If the conditions for the second phase are met, Hamas will release all remaining living prisoners, most of whom are male soldiers, in exchange for the release of more Palestinians detained in the Israeli prison system. In addition, according to the current document, Israel will begin a “full withdrawal” from Gaza.

However, these conditions, which have not yet been voted on in the Israeli Cabinet, contradict the stated positions of many members of the far-right wing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, on which he also relies for support. Like Netanyahu’s previous positions, in which he repeatedly used Hamas’ presence in Gaza to prolong the conflict.

The third stage

The details of the third phase are still unclear.

If the conditions of the second phase are met, the third phase will see the bodies of the remaining prisoners handed over in exchange for a three- to five-year reconstruction plan conducted under international supervision.

There is currently no agreement on who will run Gaza after the ceasefire. The United States is pushing for a modified version of the Palestinian Authority to do this.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that the post-war reconstruction and governance process envisages the Palestinian Authority inviting “international partners” to form an interim governance authority to manage vital services and oversee the territories.

Other partners, especially Arab countries, will provide forces to ensure security in the short term, he said in a speech at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.

For such a plan to succeed, it would need the support of Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, which has said it will not support the scheme unless there is a path to establishing a Palestinian state. This provides another point of contention for Israeli lawmakers, despite Israel agreeing to a two-state solution in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.

Israel has not yet proposed an alternative form of governance in Gaza.