Joshua Keating
Palestinians climb over rubble around wastewater© Mahmoud Issa/Anadolu via Getty Images
At last, Israel and Hamas have reached a deal — of a sort. On Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump announced that the warring parties in Gaza agreed to implement the “first phase” of the peace plan he presented in September. While this doesn’t quite mean the war is completely finished just yet, it appears to be an earnest attempt by Israel and Hamas to begin ending two years of bloody conflict, destruction, and despair.
Over two years of war — launched after Hamas invaded Israel and killed around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took around 250 more as hostages back to Gaza on October 7, 2023 — Israel has annihilated the Gaza Strip. It has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, starved and displaced most of Gaza’s 2 million residents, and reduced most of the territory’s buildings and infrastructure to rubble. The fate of the hostages has also wrenched Israel’s population, driving many of its citizens to join massive protests demanding a deal to end the war and return those kidnapped for more than a year. Globally, Israel’s conduct has left its reputation in tatters, its leaders charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court and isolated on the world stage by nearly all but its closest ally, the United States. The war, and its unpopularity abroad, led Israel’s former allies Britain, France, Canada, Australia, Portugal, and Belgium to recognize Palestinian statehood at last month’s U.N. General Assembly.
Now we’ll find out if the peace can hold, and if so, what the “day after” actually looks like. Wednesday’s deal means, the parties say, that all Israeli hostages who are still being held in Gaza will be returned, beginning with those still living, estimated to be around 20 people, as soon as Monday; the remains of the dead Israeli hostages (approximately 30) will reportedly be returned in phases afterward. In exchange Israel will release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, approximately 1,700 of whom were captured during the current conflict. Israel also says its army will retreat to an agreed upon line in Gaza as the first part of its withdrawal from the territory.
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