Israel-Gaza ceasefire: What’s been agreed?
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. After 15 months of war and long negotiations, the leaders of Israel and Hamas have reached a deal to stop fighting in Gaza and to release prisoners and hostages. Celebrations were held in Tel Aviv and also in the city of Khan Yunis in Gaza.

The agreement was mediated by Qatar, with officials from the U.S. and Egypt also involved. As we're recording this, there are still a few issues to work out over the final agreement between Israel and Hamas. In this episode, we're going to explain what we know about what's in the deal and why it's happening now. I'm William Lee Adams, and this is What in the World from the BBC World Service.

First, a reminder of what led to the current situation. Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., U.K., Israel, and many other nations, attacked Israel on the 7th of October, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 people back to Gaza as hostages. Israel then carried out a massive offensive on Gaza, killing more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The ceasefire would basically pause the war. Both sides would stop their attacks and fighting while prisoner and hostage swaps are carried out. But it's not clear if this means the war will end for good. The Hamas-run civil defense agency says more Palestinians have been killed since the deal was announced on Wednesday evening. So what is in the deal exactly?

Full details haven't been released, but the first phase of the deal is due to come into effect on Sunday, as long as it's approved by the Israeli cabinet and government. Here's our reporter Jonah Fisher with the details. There are three phases to this deal, but only the first part has been agreed.

It's a six-week ceasefire with the phased release of 33 hostages who were seized during Hamas's attacks 15 months ago. In return for each hostage set free, Israel will release dozens of Palestinian prisoners. More aid will immediately flow into the Gaza Strip and Israel will pull its soldiers out of the more densely populated parts of the territory. Displaced people will then be allowed to return to find out

what, if anything, is left of their homes. There is still a group of Israeli hostages, men of military age, who are not part of the first releases.

Their fate has been left to another round of talks, which are due to start 16 days into the ceasefire. It's only then that key questions about Gaza's future, such as who will govern it and whether Israel fully withdraws its forces, will be addressed. So there's a lot of moving parts with uncertainty over the next two phases, but it's being celebrated as it stands already. Is

Israel's attacks on Gaza have led to severe food shortages, with aid struggling to reach those most in need. So it's welcome news for people there. That's Sanabel's reaction to the announcement. She's a 17-year-old living in Gaza.

We heard from her in our episode about how life had changed one year after the October 7th attacks. We are delighted. Literally all of us are over the moon because there are progress in negotiations. So all of us were waiting for this moment for a long time. It is time to heal. People in Israel are also hopeful for the return of their loved ones.

Yossi is the cousin of a hostage taken by Hamas. Here are his feelings about the deal. It's like a rollercoaster. We don't know if they're on the list, if they're going to come back in the first place, if they're alive. We actually don't know anything, so it's scary.

Here's Lise Doucette, our chief international correspondent, with her take on the deal. I think we have to see this deal. It will almost be day by day. Today is a day of rare celebration, of enormous relief and of cautious hope for the many Palestinians in Gaza who have lived in utter misery and unprecedented loss and pain.

and for the agony of the Israeli families who don't know if their loved ones are alive or dead and whether they'll be coming home. This is a beginning and even a beginning is a good thing.

But there is no guarantee that they will get to the second phase, the third phase, that Gaza will get to the point of having a future. It has to be fought for day in, day out, week in, week out for a very long time to come. How is it being reported in Israeli and Palestinian media today?

This is BBC Monitoring's Shaina Oppenheimer. There's a lot of excitement that we're seeing in both Israeli and Palestinian media. There's this great sense of relief. Upon closer examination, you start to see division on both sides.

So when looking at Israeli media, much of the mainstream media is thrilled about the deal. Of course, there's a lot of criticism about the details of the deal. They're also saying that despite everything, this was necessary for the return of the hostages.

Now when you look at the right-wing media, they're saying that this wasn't worth it. They're really focused on the Israeli army now having to withdraw from Gaza, the fact that Netanyahu didn't withstand the pressure from President-elect Donald Trump,

Now shifting focus to Palestinian media, the landscape is also split between media that is tied to or affiliated with Hamas in Gaza or those tied to or affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, which is the body that rules certain parts of the occupied West Bank. Hamas-tied media are celebrating the deal

Quite interestingly now, media tied to the Palestinian Authority hasn't really given much attention to the deal. They have been involved in efforts to kind of

Envision some kind of role for them in governing Gaza after the war, but the way they may or may not report on a hostage deal is some kind of attempt not to give Hamas too much popularity because that is their rival and long-standing rival. And just to remind you, the occupied West Bank is a chunk of land between Israel and Jordan and has been occupied by Israel since 1967. ♪

It's taken a long time to reach this point, but why has it been able to happen now? Here's Liszt, who said again. There's been a huge realignment of the Middle East. This is a Middle East that has changed beyond every expectation. There were dizzying events, red lines being crossed, things we never expected to see before, which has resulted in a total realignment of the political map of this region. Hezbollah is weakened immensely.

its leadership decapitated. The leadership of Hamas is gone. Hamas is not destroyed, but significantly diminished. Iran is also diminished in terms of what it used to describe as its forward defenses, its proxies across the region. Even though it continues to deny that they are proxies, they were part of what Iran called its ring of fire. Most of those fires escalated

have gone out. If not, they're just embers now. It's basically Houthis from faraway Yemen who've been launching most of the rockets.

So, they were all weakened. Hamas, which had expected this to be the war of all wars for them, that all of the other players in this so-called axis of resistance would come in, they cannot come in anymore. And we saw that most spectacularly in the fall of the House of Assad. Another key factor of why this is happening now is the role of the United States. On Monday, Donald Trump will be sworn in as president once again, and President Biden will leave the White House.

Sarah Smith is our North America editor. You've got this deal coming just as he's about to leave the White House in four days time. And you've got Donald Trump, of course, coming in. I mean, Donald Trump leapt on social media on his own platform on Truth Social to announce that a deal had been done before we'd had any kind of official confirmation of it at all. He said that this was an epic victory in the Middle East and that the hostages were going to be coming home.

And he can claim some credit, I think, for having put enough pressure on Israel particularly to sign up to this deal. He's been making threatening noises in the last few days. He said publicly that if the hostages aren't released before he's sworn into office on Monday, all hell will break loose. He didn't explain what

that exactly meant. But, you know, I think everybody got the gist that he was very, very keen that this deal get done. And so he's claiming the credit for having tipped it over the line because he's coming into office. And of course, Joe Biden wants to claim the credit because it's happened whilst he's in office. So what hope is there that this ceasefire could lead to the end of the war? Jeremy Bowen is the BBC's international editor. This conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has been going on. Its roots have

are more than a century old when Zionist settlement was starting in the early part of the 20th century in the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. This is an intractable, long-running conflict, and this has been one of the worst episodes within it, the bloodiest war inside that conflict. But

This is a ceasefire deal. At the moment, it's a temporary ceasefire. In no sense does it take a step towards ending the conflict. That will require an enormous amount of vision and sacrifice and the establishment, I would say, of a Palestinian state. And at the moment, that's for the birds.

After 15 months of war, the agreement between Israel and Hamas has been met with a cautious optimism. Cautious because in the cold hard light, there's ambiguity to the deal, which means that fighting could resume after it stops. Despite that shadow of uncertainty, though, the deal has brought joy to both sides. Many will hope that gives the move toward peace lasting momentum. Thanks for listening to this episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm William Lee Adams.

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