Fifteen months of fighting in Gaza is poised to end in the coming hours, as Israel and Hamas approve a ceasefire deal that has been months in the making.
In a Wednesday Oval Office address, President Biden praised the cooperation between his administration and that of President-elect Trump in sealing the deal.
"This plan was developed and negotiated by my team, and it will be largely implemented by the incoming administration," Biden said. "That's why I told my team to keep the incoming administration fully informed. Because that's how it should be: Working together as Americans."
Negotiators from the U.S., Qatar and Egypt have been working for months to end the drawn out, destructive conflict, only for talks to repeatedly fail at the eleventh hour. In the 15 months since Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel — during which 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage — more than 46,000 Gazans lost their lives and a majority of the enclave's population has been displaced.
The hard-won agreement will bring the first real break in violence since a weeklong truce expired Dec. 1, 2023. Referencing his decades-long career in foreign policy, Biden said Wednesday that reaching a deal was "one of the toughest negotiations I've ever experienced."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Wednesday with both Biden and Trump. Netanyahu thanked the president-elect for "helping Israel bring an end to the suffering of dozens of hostages and their families" in a post from the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. He also "spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden and thanked him as well for his assistance in advancing the hostages deal," the prime minister's office said.
What happens now? The ceasefire takes effect immediately once finalized. It is expected to begin Sunday if Israel's Cabinet and Supreme Court allow the deal to proceed — the day before Biden leaves office and Trump takes power for a second time.
Netanyahu's office today said it is delaying a vote on the ceasefire deal over last-minute disputes with Hamas, which the group denies. The prime minister has faced immense domestic pressure to bring home the hostages, but his far-right coalition partners have threatened to bring down his government if he makes too many concessions.
When implemented, the truce's first phase will last six weeks, during which hostages will start being released — including two U.S. citizens. About 100 hostages are thought to still be in Gaza, although the Israeli authorities believe around 35 of those people are dead. Additionally, Palestinian prisoners will be released from Israeli prisons as part of the deal.
While Israel will also begin to withdraw its military from Gaza, it is expected to hold on to significant "assets," including high-profile Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism and territory in Gaza, to use as leverage in a second stage of negotiations to ensure that all hostages are released, The New York Times reports. That phase of the deal will begin on the 16th day of the truce.
Mediators of the ceasefire proposal vowed in a statement that leaders from Egypt, Qatar and the U.S. would act as guarantors of the agreement. Their role is to work with Israel and Hamas to ensure both parties implement all three phases of the agreement in full.
▪ The Washington Post: Here's what we know about the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal.
▪ The New Yorker: In Israel, grief and frustration about a long, brutal war is mixed with joy that some hostages may soon return.
▪ Reuters: World leaders react to the ceasefire deal.
▪ Time magazine analysis: A Gaza ceasefire is here. Why did it take so long?
A permanent plan for Gaza's future remains unclear. Under the ceasefire, much-needed humanitarian aid will reach the enclave at significantly higher rates, a Qatari official told The Hill, adding that hospitals, health centers and bakeries will be rehabilitated. But rebuilding could take decades.
Speaking Wednesday afternoon at the White House, Biden acknowledged in some of his sharpest terms yet the suffering that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have endured as Israel waged war on Hamas. His administration has faced backlash for not doing enough to press Israel to avoid civilian casualties in its military offensive.
"The Palestinian people have gone through hell," he said. "Too many innocent people have died. Too many communities have been destroyed."
ProPublica: A year of empty threats and a "smokescreen" policy: How the State Department let Israel get away with horrors in Gaza.
While the ceasefire took months to broker, within hours a battle had erupted in Washington over who deserves the credit for it, The Hill's Niall Stanage writes in The Memo.
"The EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November," Trump insisted on social media shortly after noon Wednesday. "We have achieved so much without even being in the White House."
Trump had warned of "all hell" breaking loose in the region if Hamas did not release hostages before Jan. 20, and his special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, worked closely with Biden's negotiators to reach a conclusion of the deal. The president said Wednesday that the deal was based on a framework he proposed last May.
Biden offered acknowledgment of the Trump team's efforts Wednesday. He said that while "the deal was developed and negotiated under my administration … its terms will be implemented, for the most part, by the next administration."
"We're handing off to the next team a real opportunity for a brighter future in the Middle East," Biden said. "I hope they take it."
Axios: How Trump and Biden joined forces to broker the deal.
Trump's nominee for secretary of State, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), on Wednesday faced his Senate colleagues at a Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing as news of the ceasefire broke. Rubio gave credit to both the Biden team and the Trump transition team for working side by side. But asked if he supported a Palestinian state, the end goal of the Biden administration's diplomatic efforts in the region, the Florida Republican would not commit.
"Part of that [ceasefire] deal has this very tenuous but important six-week period, [to transition] to a civil administration, that could serve as a foundation to build upon. We don't know yet," Rubio said.
Meanwhile in Gaza, celebrations rang out as Palestinians heard the news that a ceasefire agreement had been reached. Farah Hathout, 20, who has been displaced nine times throughout the war, told The Washington Post she woke up to check the news and couldn't believe it at first.
"Is it real? Have they signed?" Hathout, who is studying to be an English translator, said she asked herself. "I pray it goes through. May God compensate us for what we experienced."
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