Israel’s full cabinet voted on Saturday local time to approve a cease-fire agreement with the Hamas terrorist group, which is expected to set in motion a pause of the brutal 15-month war in Gaza and the release of dozens of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel.
The agreement was approved in Jerusalem around 1 a.m. Saturday after more than seven hours of deliberation. The meeting’s start time was delayed three hours to 6:30 p.m. Friday due to an ongoing discussion in Israel’s security cabinet, the Jerusalem Post reported. Earlier Friday, the smaller cabinet recommended that the cease-fire be approved, though some members vehemently disagreed.
In Israel’s full cabinet, 24 ministers voted in favor of the deal, and eight voted against it. Because the general cabinet meeting continued into the start of Shabbat, Haredi ministers left behind notes to show they backed the deal.
The cease-fire, brokered by Qatari and Egyptian negotiators, includes three phases. The first will see the release of 33 hostages over a six-week period, starting this Sunday. Those hostages will include women, children, and men over 50. President Joe Biden, who is set to leave office on Monday, said some Americans will be included in the first phase.
During the first phase of the deal, the Israel Defense Forces will also begin a staged withdrawal from populated areas of Gaza, and additional aid will flow into the territory.
The second phase of the agreement will include talks on additional hostage releases, further withdrawals of Israeli troops, and security protocols to allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza. The remaining hostages would be released, and the IDF would fully withdraw from Gaza during the third phase of the agreement if the two sides get that far.
Israel could release between 990 and 1,650 Palestinian prisoners, depending on the hostages released, according to Reuters.
The cease-fire is the second such deal achieved during the Israel–Hamas war. In November 2023, the first cease-fire lasted just under a week. The temporary truce led to the release of 105 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
About 250 hostages were abducted by Hamas terrorists on October 7. Fewer than 100 hostages, both living and dead, remain captive in Gaza. Israeli authorities estimate a third of those are dead.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Thursday that approval of the latest cease-fire agreement was dealt a “last-minute crisis” regarding Hamas’s demands over the prisoners it wants released.
Netanyahu’s office said the agreed-upon deal allows Israel to veto the releases of “mass murderers who are symbols of terror” but that Hamas was demanding to dictate the identity of the terrorists being released.
“There was no deal on the table because Hamas opposed any deal,” Netanyahu said. “However, the situation changed because of the heroism of our fighters and because of our actions in the region, including our severe blow to the Iranian axis. Hamas remained isolated in this theatre, and as a result, it folded and agreed to this deal.”
Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich were two of the security cabinet members who voted against the deal. They vowed to leave the government if the agreement passed.
“I love Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and will make sure he continues to be prime minister, but I will leave because the deal that was signed is disastrous,” Ben-Gvir wrote on X, according to a translation. He said the deal “releases hundreds of terrorists with blood on their hands, who, upon their release, will seek to murder the next Jew, it allows the return of thousands of terrorists to the northern Gaza Strip with weapons — when their goal is to murder Jews, it harms Israel’s ability to defend itself on the Philadelphia axis and at other important points, and it undoes all the war successes that cost us so much blood.”
On Thursday, Israel released a new video of a Hamas leader, Khalil al-Haya, seemingly responding to the cease-fire agreement by calling the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel a “source of pride” and vowing that “our enemy will see no moment of weakness or surrender from us.”
The deal comes just days before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House. Before the deal was agreed upon, Trump said there would be “all hell to pay” if the hostages held by Hamas weren’t released by his second inauguration on Monday.
On Friday, Netanyahu told the cabinet that Trump had given his full support to Israel in the event that Hamas violates the deal before the second phase. Netanyahu also said Trump would unfreeze weapons shipments, which the Israeli prime minister alleged the Biden administration withheld.
Trump praised the cease-fire this week on Truth Social as an “EPIC” agreement that “could only have happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies.”