‘Deal reached’: Israel, Hamas sign ceasefire agreement in Doha, truce implemented Monday

Negotiators from Israel and Hamas officially signed their ceasefire deal in Doha but the Netanyahu government won’t sign off on it until Saturday night (AEDT), delaying its implementation.

Negotiators from Israel, Hamas, the US and Qatar have officially signed their historic ceasefire deal in Doha, but the truce is not expected to be implemented until Monday.

On Friday afternoon (AEDT) Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said a “deal to release the hostages” had been reached and that he had ordered his security cabinet to convene later in the day, followed by a government meeting to approve the plan.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was informed by the negotiating team that agreements have been reached on a deal to release the hostages,” the PMO said in a statement.

However a spokesman for Mr Netanyahu said the full cabinet meeting was not slated to sign off on it until Saturday night (local time), and that the truce was likely to go ahead on Monday.

The breakthrough came hours after Israel delayed the cabinet vote on the deal, after Mr Netanyahu accused Hamas of reneging on parts of the agreement, underscoring the pact’s fragility.

Donald Trump blasted the delay, saying the deal had “better be done” before he is inaugurated on January 20.

Speaking to podcast host Dan Bongino on Friday (AEDT), Mr Trump said if he and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff hadn’t got involved in the negotiations “the hostages would never have come out”.

“We changed the course of it, and we changed it fast, and frankly, it better be done before I take the oath of office,” Mr Trump said.

“We shook hands, and we signed certain documents, but it better be done.

”We gotta get it done.”

He added: “I’m not looking for credit. I want to get these people out. We’ve got to get them out.”

President Biden and the prime minister of Qatar announced Wednesday both Israel and Hamas had accepted the truce, the result of a year of painstaking diplomacy that reached a conclusion in the days before Donald Trump’s inauguration as president.

Palestinian militant group Hamas also said it had reached a deal with Israel, while Israeli President Isaac Herzog welcomed the agreement and urged the Israeli government to accept it.

But Mr Netanyahu accused Hamas on Thursday of reneging on parts of the agreement during negotiations taking place in Qatar, creating what his office called “a last-minute crisis”.

The Israeli prime minister’s office said the cabinet, which had been expected to convene early Thursday, wouldn’t meet to vote on the deal until Israeli negotiators said Hamas had accepted all aspects of the deal.

Israeli officials said later on Thursday that the cabinet vote was moved to Friday and a government vote, the last major hurdle the deal needs to clear, was pushed back to Saturday.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said that he and his party colleagues would quit the cabinet if it approved a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, though they would not leave the country’s ruling coalition.

“If this irresponsible agreement is approved and implemented, the Jewish Power party will not be part of the government and will leave it,” he said at a press conference late Thursday evening, while keeping open the possibility of reversing course if the ceasefire collapsed.

“If the war against Hamas resumes, with intensity, in order to achieve the objectives of the war that have not been achieved, we will return to the government.”

Mr Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party holds six seats in the 120-seat Parliament, and if the party resigns, it would reduce the government’s parliamentary majority from 68 to a razor-thin majority of 62.

Ezzat Al-Rishq, a senior Hamas official and member of the group’s political bureau, said Thursday that the group remained committed to the deal.

Another Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, told a pan-Arab satellite channel that Mr Netanyahu’s comments were “baseless”.

Biden administration officials said they were confident the deal would go ahead despite the last-minute disputes.

“We’re aware of these issues and we are working through them with the Israeli government, as well as other partners in the region,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “We are confident these implementing details can be hammered out and that the deal will move forward this weekend.”

One issue that arose in the talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, was the matter of Israel’s withdrawal from a strip of land on the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi corridor. Israeli officials have said they want Israel’s forces to remain in the area longer. The text of the agreement, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, calls on Israel to gradually reduce its forces in the area in the first of the three phases of the deal.

An Israeli official said, “Israel remains in during all of the first phase in the corridor, for all 42 days.” And while the two sides have agreed on the hostages that would be freed from Gaza, a disagreement remains over which Palestinian prisoners Israel would release in return, the mediators said.

Hamas has again raised the release of six prominent Palestinian detainees, including political leaders Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat, mediators said. The group brought up the issue after initially agreeing to postpone discussion of it to a later phase of the deal, they added.

Hamas is making new demands that Israel won’t agree to, including regarding the list of prisoners to be released, the Israeli official said.

The negotiating teams in Doha were pushing to resolve the pending issues, Arab mediators said Thursday.

The prospect of a ceasefire hasn’t brought about a lull in the fighting. Israel launched more air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Thursday morning, according to Palestinian authorities and residents of the enclave. Israeli strikes killed 81 people in the past 24 hours, according to Palestinian health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants. A number of casualties were still under the rubble and on the roads where rescue and recovery workers couldn’t reach them, they said.

The Israeli military said it had struck 50 targets across the enclave over the past day, including members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza, and weapons and other military facilities belonging to Palestinian armed groups. It also said it killed a Hamas member who participated in the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the current war.

The ceasefire deal’s announcement on Wednesday came after negotiators – including Steve Witkoff, Trump’s designated Middle East envoy and officials from the US, Israel and Arab countries – convened in Doha to finalise the draft agreement.

The deal envisions several phases, starting with an initial release of hostages by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners by Israel along with convoys of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza. Hamas and Israel would negotiate the terms of a more lasting truce during the initial stage.

Within Israel, the deal also faces resistance from far-right politicians who want Israel to stick to its original stated war aim of eliminating Hamas. Hard-line Israeli politicians such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich hold key positions in Netanyahu’s government and have threatened in the past to leave his cabinet if he accepts a ceasefire, risking the collapse of the ruling coalition.

Ben-Gvir on Thursday said he would leave the government if a deal was passed and urged Smotrich and members of Netanyahu’s party, Likud, to join him.

Groups of right-wing protesters who oppose the deal took to the streets of Jerusalem on Thursday, with dozens blocking roads and holding signs that read, “Yes to victory, no to surrender!” Protests in recent days against the deal have drawn hundreds of activists.

If it is fully implemented, the deal could mark the beginning of the end of one of the deadliest episodes in modern Middle East history. The war has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza and hundreds of Israeli soldiers, leaving much of the enclave in ruins.

Israel launched its offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel that killed about 1200 people. Palestinian militants seized another 250 hostages, setting in motion a painful ordeal for hundreds of the captives’ families who have campaigned for their release.

A ceasefire in Gaza could also calm tensions across the region after the conflict ignited wider hostilities, including a war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the first-ever exchanges of direct fire between Israel and Iran last year.

Dow Jones