(CNN) — A four-day truce between Israel and Hamas will begin on Friday morning, with civilian hostages and Palestinian prisoners to be released later in the afternoon, Qatar announced Thursday, hours after the deal was originally meant to take effect.
The pause in fighting will start at 7 a.m. local time (midnight ET), with 13 women and children hostages to be freed at 4 p.m., according to a spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majed Al-Ansari.
The list of hostages who are expected to be released has been handed to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, Al-Ansari said, adding that the communications and talks between all mediating parties continued until Thursday morning.
The Mossad will also hand over a list of Palestinian prisoners expected to be released to the Qataris, he added. “Whenever we have both lists confirmed this is when we can begin with the process of getting people out,” the spokesperson said.
Responding to a question from CNN, Al-Ansari said he could not disclose which route the released hostages would take, but will be working with the Red Cross and “parties of the conflict.”
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed it had received a preliminary list of hostages expected to be released.
Ofir Gendelman, the Israeli prime minister’s spokesperson to the Arab world, wrote on X: “Israel confirms that a preliminary list of names of the kidnapped has been received. The competent authorities are examining the details of the list and are in the meantime communicating with all the families of the kidnapped.”
An Israeli official told CNN Wednesday that the truce had been slated to begin at 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) on Thursday to be followed by the release of at least 50 women and children out of the more than 230 being held hostage in Gaza. But plans to release the hostages were delayed late Wednesday, just hours before the pause in fighting was initially expected to begin.
Under the deal outlined earlier, 150 Palestinian prisoners would be released from Israeli jails. The prisoners concerned are women and children, Hamas said Wednesday, adding that the agreement also involves the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying aid relief, medical supplies and fuel to all parts of the besieged territory.
The Israeli government on Wednesday published a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners for possible release, as Israel is offering a potential second phase of exchanges.
The list includes the ages of the prisoners, and the charges on which they are being held – throwing stones and “harming regional security” are among the most common. Others are listed as detained for supporting illegal terror organizations, illegal weapons charges, incitement, and at least two accusations of attempted murder.
Most of the Palestinian prisoners listed as eligible for release are male teenagers aged 16 to 18 – children under the United Nations definition – although a handful are as young as 14. Some 33 are women, according to a CNN count.
Delay until Friday
Israel’s National Security Council said earlier in a statement that the first group of hostages would not be released before Friday. An Israeli official told CNN the start of an agreed temporary truce in fighting was also delayed until Friday.
“Talks to release our hostages are advancing and are ongoing. The start of the release process will take place according to the original agreement between both sides, and not before Friday,” the statement said.
The comments over ongoing planning echo those from American officials.
A US National Security Council spokesperson stressed in a statement late Wednesday that the hostage deal “remains agreed,” adding that the parties were “working out final logistical details particularly for the first day of implementation.”
“It is our view that nothing should be left to chance as the hostages begin coming home,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. “Our primary objective is to ensure that they are brought home safely. That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning.”
One Israeli official familiar with the matter downplayed its seriousness, putting it down to “fairly minor implementation details.”
Speaking at a Wednesday evening press conference held before the delay was announced, Netanyahu expressed confidence the agreement would soon go into effect, even as he offered few details about its implementation.
However, the prime minister warned on Thursday that getting the first group of hostages out of Gaza is “not without its challenges.”
“We hope to get this first tranche out, and then we’re committed to getting everyone out,” Netanyahu said during a meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
Officials and analysts in Israel have long cautioned that any deal would be precarious up and until the hostages were safely across the border.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had continued ground and air operations in Gaza on Wednesday ahead of the expected start of the truce, carrying out strikes in the north-eastern and central parts of the Gaza Strip. Areas further south, including Khan Younis and Rafah, were also hit, according to Palestinian accounts.
Israeli forces continued to strike targets into Thursday, the IDF said, including in northwest Jabalya.
The IDF also said Thursday that Israeli soldiers had located a tunnel shaft inside a mosque and located and struck another tunnel shaft in an agricultural area in Beit Hanoun. It claimed IDF soldiers had located “numerous weapons” and identified a tunnel shaft inside a civilian residence in the area.
In a briefing Wednesday before the delay was announced, Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli army, had called the pending truce a “complicated process” that is “yet to be finalized.”
The process “could take time and last over a few stages,” he added.
The deal had marked a major diplomatic breakthrough nearly seven weeks after the start of a conflict that has spiraled into a grave humanitarian crisis in the enclave. The announcement was greeted with relief and heightened anticipation from the families of those taken hostage.
The deal, as laid out by key negotiator Qatar in a statement, would see hostages held captive by Hamas released in exchange for a number of Palestinian women and children in Israeli jails. The truce, meanwhile, would also allow the entry of “a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid,” the statement said.
There is an option for the pause to last as long as 10 days, but Israeli officials believe it is unlikely to last that long.
Netanyahu said when the deal was approved that for every additional 10 hostages released, there will be an additional one day pause in the fighting.
Hamas is holding 236 hostages captive in Gaza, including foreign nationals from 26 countries, according to figures from the Israeli military. The mass abductions at gunpoint took place during October 7, when Hamas militants struck across the border in a coordinated and bloody surprise attack killing around 1,200 people – the largest such attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.
Prior to the deal, only a handful of hostages had been released.
Israel responded to the attack by declaring war against Hamas and imposing a siege on Gaza that cut off supplies of food, water, medicines and fuel, while launching a relentless air and ground assault. Some 12,700 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to data from the Palestinian health ministry in the West Bank, which draws on information from Hamas-run health authorities.
from Boston News, Weather, Sports | WHDH 7News
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