Hamas accepts draft settlement for Gaza ceasefire that can see 1,000 Palestinian prisoners launched in trade for 33 Israeli hostages

Hamas has accepted a draft agreement for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the release of dozens of hostages, two officials involved in the talks said today.

Mediator Qatar said the negotiations were at the ‘closest point’ yet to sealing a deal.

An Israeli official said progress has been made, but the details are being finalized. The plan would need to be submitted to the Israeli Cabinet for final approval.

All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks.

Two Palestinian sources close to Hamas told AFP today that Israel would release about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in the first stage of a Gaza truce deal in exchange for 33 hostages.

‘Israel will release about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including several with lengthy sentences,’ one of the two sources said. 

An Israeli government official said that ‘several hundred terrorists will be released’ as part of the first phase of the deal.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the proposed agreement, and an Egyptian official and a Hamas official confirmed its authenticity. 

The deal is hoped to pave the way for a more enduring peace deal after 15 months of gruelling conflict.

Qatar announced today that obstacles to a deal between Israel and Hamas for a truce and hostage exchange had been overcome after months of stalled negotiations.

‘During the past months, there were underlying issues, major issues between the two parties unresolved,’ Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari told a news conference.

‘These issues were resolved during the talks in the past couple of weeks, and therefore we have reached a point where the major issues that were preventing a deal from happening were addressed.’

The address is the most significant acknowledgement of progress in talks since the November 2023 truce, which saw a temporary pause in the fighting, the release of some 50 Israeli hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners, as well as the entry of more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Both sides have accused each other of blocking the road to a more lasting solution to the conflict.

Hamas said in a statement today it hoped the talks in Doha could lead to a ‘clear and comprehensive agreement’.

Qatar foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari was hopeful about the progress, but insisted ‘until there is an announcement… we shouldn’t be over-excited about what’s happening right now’.

The United States, Egypt and Qatar have spent the past year trying to mediate an end the 15-month war and secure the release dozens of hostages captured in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Ninety-eight hostages are still captive inside Gaza, according to Israeli authorities, and the military believes at least a third them are dead. 

The people of Gaza have suffered heavily from Israel’s devastating retaliatory campaign, with as many as 46,645 people killed since October 2023, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures that the UN considers reliable.

The three-phase agreement for a ceasefire under discussion – based on a framework laid out by U.S. President Joe Biden and endorsed by the U.N. Security Council – would begin with the gradual release of 33 hostages over a six-week period, including women, children, older adults and wounded civilians in exchange for potentially hundreds of Palestinian women and children imprisoned by Israel.

Among the 33 would be five female Israeli soldiers, each of whom would be released in exchange for 50 Palestinian prisoners, including 30 convicted militants who are serving life sentences. By the end of the first phase, all civilian captives – living or dead – will have been released.

During this first, 42-day phase, Israeli forces would withdraw from population centers, Palestinians would be allowed to start returning to their homes in northern Gaza and there would be a surge of humanitarian aid, with some 600 trucks entering each day.

Details of the second phase still must be negotiated during the first. Those details remain difficult to resolve – and the deal does not include written guarantees that the ceasefire will continue until a deal is reached. That leaves the potential for Israel to resume its military campaign after the first phase ends.

The three mediators, however, have given Hamas verbal guarantees that negotiations will continue as planned and that they will press for a deal to implement the second and third phases before the end of the first, the Egyptian official said.

The deal would allow Israel throughout the first phase to remain in control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the band of territory along Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Hamas had initially demanded Israel withdraw from. 

But Israel would pull out from the Netzarim Corridor, a belt across central Gaza where it had sought a mechanism for searching Palestinians for arms when they return to the territory’s north.

In the second phase, Hamas would release the remaining living captives, mainly male soldiers, in exchange for more prisoners and the “complete withdrawal” of Israeli forces from Gaza, according to the draft agreement. 

Hamas has said it will not free the remaining hostages without an end to the war and a complete Israeli withdrawal, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in the past vowed to resume fighting unless Hamas’s military and governing capabilities are eliminated.

Unless an alternative government for Gaza is worked out in those talks, it could leave Hamas in charge of the territory.

In a third phase, the bodies of remaining hostages would be returned in exchange for a three- to five-year reconstruction plan to be carried out in Gaza under international supervision.