Celebrations of the announcement of a cease-fire in Ramallah, West Bank, on Wednesday.
Credit...Afif Amireh for The New York Times

What We Know About the Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire

The agreement went into effect on Sunday, pausing fighting for the first time in more than a year.

by · NY Times

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A cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Sunday, the first pause in the fighting for more than a year, as three hostages were released from Gaza and reunited with family members.

In Gaza, joyful Palestinians honked car horns and blasted music in the central city of Deir al Balah, where celebratory gunfire rang out and children ran around in the streets.

Hours later, Israel still had not released 90 Palestinian prisoners, all women or minors, who were to be freed as part of the first of a series of scheduled exchanges for the hostages held in Gaza. Qadura Fares, the Palestinian commissioner for prisoners’ affairs, accused Israel of seeking to dampen celebrations by delaying the prisoners’ release until late at night.

Here is a look at the terms of the agreement and what is happening so far as the truce begins.

Follow our live coverage here.

Key questions on the cease-fire deal:

What’s in the agreement?

The cease-fire deal starts with an initial phase lasting six weeks. In all, 33 hostages and more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners are to be released. Six hundred trucks carrying humanitarian relief will be allowed into Gaza each day, though how the aid will be distributed is not clear.

At the beginning of the first phase, Israel is to redeploy its forces and on the seventh day Palestinians displaced in southern Gaza can begin to return to the northern part of the territory.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in southern Gaza have been living in tents, makeshift shelters, rented homes and relatives’ apartments for more than a year. Many of those planning to return to the north are likely to find that their homes and neighborhoods have been destroyed, especially residents of the town of Jabaliya.

Negotiations on the second phase of the deal are set to begin by the 16th day of the first phase, especially details related to the further exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners. The second phase would also last six weeks.

Read more on the terms here.

Who is being freed?

About 100 hostages are thought to still be in Gaza, although the Israeli authorities believe around 35 of them are dead. The 33 hostages to be released in the first phase include women and children, men over 50 and sick or wounded people.

Three hostages — named by Hamas and Israel as Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher — were released on the first day of the cease-fire, with four more to be set free on Day 7, and 26 more over the next five weeks. In exchange, Israel is set to free Palestinian prisoners, including some serving life sentences.

Video released by the Israeli government showed the three hostages who returned from Gaza being reunited with members of their families at Sheba Hospital in Israel. In one clip, Ms. Gonen is surrounded in an embrace by relatives as they tearfully comfort one another. Her sister, Yarden Gonen, who had traveled around the world in the past year to lobby for Romi’s release, jumps up and down in the video as the family embraces. In another clip, another released hostage, Ms. Steinbrecher, tearfully hugs members of her family.

The Israeli military also released a picture of Ms. Damari, with her mother, that showed her missing two fingers on her left hand. Ms. Damari was shot in the hand on Oct. 7, 2023.

Read more about the hostages and prisoners here.

What’s behind the uneven exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners?

As the Gaza cease-fire took hold, one aspect of the agreement was strikingly lopsided: For the three women whom Hamas freed on Sunday, Israel was expected to release 90 Palestinian women and minors held in its prisons later in the day.

Further exchanges will probably follow a similar formula. Over the six-week first phase of the truce, Hamas is expected to release 33 captives and Israel is slated to free about 1,900 Palestinians.

Such an uneven swap is not unusual. Israeli governments have long been determined to bring back captured civilians and soldiers, including dead ones, even at steep costs. The terms of such trades have often prompted fierce criticism domestically.

Hamas officials have said one of the objectives of the group’s October 2023 attack was to win the release of some of the thousands of Palestinians jailed in Israel, many of them accused of violence against Israeli soldiers and civilians.

What is the reaction in Gaza and Israel?

Both Israelis and Palestinians expressed feelings of elation tinged with doubt. Gazans are taking first steps toward rebuilding from the rubble of a war that has killed more than 46,000 people, while Israelis are relieved at the planned release of some of the hostages after 470 days in captivity.

In the Gaza Strip, celebrations began even before the cease-fire took effect. In Deir al Balah, the cease-fire was greeted with honking car horns, blasting music and celebratory gunfire. In Israel, the father of a hostage who was to be released gave thanks in a Facebook post and said a Jewish blessing.

Some hard-line members of Mr. Netanyahu’s government have opposed the deal. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right minister for national security, announced on Sunday that his party had submitted its resignation from Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition. The move threatens to destabilize the government.

And the details of the deal mean that both sides still face considerable uncertainty about how the next six weeks will play out, let alone about whether the tentative arrangement will become permanent.

Why did talks move forward?

The talks gained momentum after Israel reached a separate cease-fire agreement with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into Israel immediately after the Hamas-led attack of October 2023. Battered by its escalating conflict with Israel, Hezbollah agreed to a cease-fire with Israel in November, a deal that helped isolate Hamas.

Some officials have suggested that the change in U.S. administrations, set to take place on Monday, put pressure on Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement.

President-elect Donald J. Trump warned that there would be “all hell to pay” unless the hostages were freed by the time he took office. But in the end, the deal came about in part through a remarkable collaboration between President Biden and Mr. Trump, who temporarily put aside mutual animosity to achieve a mutual goal.

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