 "People dance as they celebrate Israel's Cabinet agreeing to the first phase of a peace plan to pause the fighting, at a plaza known as hostages square in Tel Aviv, Israel. AP")
Signed, sealed and delivered. The Benjamin Netanyahu Cabinet voted in favour of Donald Trump’s peace plan early on Friday morning. With this move, Israel and Hamas are edging closer to ending more than two years of hostilities in Gaza, though it is yet to be seen if peace will hold in the volatile region.
The vote comes a day after US President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hamas had approved implementing phase one of his 20-point Gaza peace plan during deliberations in the Egyptian town of Sharm-el-Sheikh.
Following the Israeli vote, the American leader said that he plans to leave on Sunday to visit West Asia. “The hostages will be coming back Monday or Tuesday. I’ll probably be there. I hope to be there. And we’re planning on leaving sometime Sunday, and I look forward to it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Here’s what will happen in the next few days, and what awaits Gaza in the future.
A ceasefire in Gaza and troop withdrawal
With the passage of the vote by the Netanyahu Cabinet, a ceasefire now comes into effect. However, it is not clear if the Israeli prime minister’s office has given the order to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to cease fire.
A spokesperson for the prime minister’s office said it would begin within 24 hours of the Cabinet’s approval.
And once the ceasefire kicks in, Israeli forces will begin their partial withdrawal from Gaza. As per the agreed plan, the Israeli military will withdraw to a line that will leave it in control of about 53 per cent of the Gaza Strip. There will also be a 24-hour window during which petitions objecting to the deal can be submitted to the Israeli High Court.
Additionally, a multinational force of around 200 troops overseen by the US military will monitor the Gaza ceasefire, said a senior US official. The force is likely to include troops from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the UAE. The official said their role would be to “oversee, observe [and] make sure there are no violations or incursions” of the ceasefire in Gaza.
A second senior US official said no US forces would be on the ground in Gaza, adding that the American role was to create the Joint Control Centre which will “integrate” the multinational force going in.
Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of the US military’s Central Command, will initially have 200 people on the ground.
Hostages to be released
Once the ceasefire kicks in, Hamas has 72 hours to release the hostages. However, an Israeli source was quoted as saying that the assumption is that hostages will be released before these 72 hours pass. Earlier, Trump said that they should be released on Monday or Tuesday.
As per Trump’s plan which has been agreed upon, all Israeli hostages, living and deceased, held in Gaza will be released. CNN reports that the hostages will be handed over without any ceremony.
It is believed that Hamas is holding 20 hostages alive with grave concerns for the well-being of two of them. A further 28 hostages are deceased, whose remains will also be handed over to Israel.
Israel would then release about 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli jails and 1,700 detainees from Gaza. Moreover, Israel will also return the bodies of 15 Gazans for the remains of each Israeli hostage, according to Trump’s plan.
As per some reports, Israel is still working on the list of prisoners to be released and that the issue “has not yet been resolved.” Marwan Barghouti , the Palestinian political leader who has been imprisoned by Israel since 2002, will not be released, the Israeli government spokesperson said.
The release of the hostages being held by Gaza is perhaps the biggest aspect of Trump’s Gaza plan. Families of those being held by Hamas have celebrated the news with much vigour and enthusiasm, even chanting ‘Trump for Nobel’ in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square. The Jerusalem Post even carried a silhouette of the US president filled with pictures of hostages and a headline saying “he’s bringing them home” on their front page.
Humanitarian aid to enter Gaza
Hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid will also start entering Gaza, where a famine was confirmed by UN-backed experts in August.
But questions over Gaza linger
While the world celebrates the news, there are still aspects of the deal that aren’t clear. Additionally, the future of Gaza also remains uncertain. Even senior US officials agree that Trump’s Gaza deal remains a fragile arrangement, acknowledging the plan could still fall apart amid mutual distrust between Hamas and Israel.
“There’s still, you know, just a lot of ways that this can go wrong. So we’re staying on top of the details to make sure everyone fulfills their obligations and that any misunderstandings are quickly discussed and adjudicated,” an official told reporters.
There are a lot of sticking points in Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan that still need discussions and deliberations. For instance, Trump’s plan calls for Hamas to “commit to peaceful co-existence” with Israel and lay down its arms. However, disarmament has long been a red line for the Palestinian militant group.
Then there are other questions that need to be worked out. One being the exact form of the governance in Gaza and its reconstruction. All of this is yet to be fully negotiated and or even explicitly agreed in principle.
Sky News’ Adam Parsons noted that Trump’s Gaza plan doesn’t cover everything. “We don’t know who will run Gaza in the future, for a start, which is a pretty yawning hole when you consider that Gaza’s fresh start is imminent.
“We don’t know what will happen to Hamas, or to its weapons, or really how Israel will withdraw from the Strip.
“But these talks have always been fuelled by optimism, and by the sense that if you could stop the fighting and get the hostages home, then everything else might just fall into place.”
There are also concerns that implementing the entirety of Trump’s peace plan would result in a revolt within the Netanyahu government. A CNN report notes that Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two of Israel’s far-right ministers, believe Trump’s plan represents a defeat for Israel.
We will just have to sit and watch how things play out, but for now we can celebrate the news of the impending release of the hostages who have been held since October 7, 2023.
With inputs from agencies