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The Israeli military said a ceasefire in Gaza had gone into effect, paving the way for the release of hostages held in the strip and setting in motion the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Palestinian territory.
The Israel Defense Forces said that, as of noon local time, its troops had completed their partial withdrawal, pulling back to “updated deployment lines in preparation for the ceasefire agreement and the return of hostages”.
The ceasefire came into effect hours after the Israeli cabinet approved the first phase of the US-brokered deal, which is designed to end Israel’s two-year war against Hamas in Gaza.
Tens of thousands of Gazans had started streaming back north to the ruins of Gaza City and other neighbourhoods. They were warned by the IDF to stay away from troops.
Friday’s troop pullback still leaves the IDF in control of more than half of Gaza, and any further withdrawal depends on the progress of negotiations to fulfil the rest of Trump’s plan.
The agreement nonetheless marks the most significant breakthrough in months to end the longest and deadliest Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which started after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel.
Previous diplomatic efforts to end the war have floundered, with Israel in recent months stepping up its offensive against the militant group.
Under the first phase of the deal, Hamas will release the remaining 48 hostages held in the strip — 20 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. This includes 250 who are serving life sentences.
Israel must also allow a surge of aid into the besieged enclave, which is in the grips of famine.
“We reached a momentous breakthrough, something that people said was never going to be done,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting on Thursday.
The president said the hostages would be released on Monday or Tuesday, and added he would be travelling to the Middle East “fairly soon” for an official signing of the deal. Israel’s Channel 12 News reported that he would also head to Jerusalem to speak to the country’s parliament.
In a televised address on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who critics have accused of prolonging the war to appease his far-right coalition partners — sought to take credit for securing the return of the hostages.
“I believed that if we applied heavy military pressure, combined with heavy diplomatic pressure, we would absolutely be able to return all of our hostages,” he said. “And that is exactly what we did.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been the intermediary between Hamas and the Israeli military during the handover of hostages and their remains during an earlier ceasefire, welcomed the agreement.
In the past, Hamas has handed over hostages to ICRC staff in televised ceremonies, to be driven through Gaza to IDF posts, while assisting in the staggered release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Palestinian officials have demanded that the UN and others should immediately be allowed to provide vast amounts of food and medicine to starving Gazans, and warned locals to avoid rushing back to their homes while the situation on the ground remained precarious.
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Regional diplomats said that negotiating the second phase of the agreement — which calls for the disarmament of Hamas, the deployment of an international stabilisation force and the staggered withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza — would prove a much bigger challenge.
Netanyahu said Israeli troops would remain in Gaza until Hamas disarms, and his government had so far only committed to the hostage-prisoner exchange.
His far-right coalition partners, who voted against the deal at Friday’s cabinet meeting, have opposed ending the conflict short of Hamas’s destruction.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, said before the cabinet vote that if in the future “Hamas rule is not dismantled” his Jewish Power party “will dismantle the government”.
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One senior US official sought to play down the public divisions between the two sides. “Everyone’s trying to save face,” the official said, suggesting what they stated “privately” was different.
Hamas’s political chief Khalil al-Hayya had said on Thursday that the group had received guarantees from Washington that the conflict in Gaza would end “completely”.
Hamas has accepted that it will not govern Gaza, but has yet to agree to its disarmament and wants to negotiate the timelines and framework for the Israeli military’s redeployment, as well as the role of the international stabilisation force.
It is also not clear which countries would be willing to contribute to the force, or how long it would take to deploy.
