The Qatar Israel-Hamas ceasefire will come into force on Sunday morning

A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel will take effect in less than 24 hours, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

Qatari Foreign Minister Majid al-Ansari said in a statement on X that the ceasefire would begin at 8:30 a.m. local time (1:30 a.m. ET) on Sunday. He advised people to be cautious and wait for instructions from officials when the deal comes into effect.

Early Saturday morning, Israel’s Cabinet will free dozens of hostages in Gaza and approve a ceasefire deal with Hamas that will end the 15-month war, bringing the two sides a step closer to ending the deadliest and most destructive fighting to date.

Despite reports of a ceasefire, sirens sounded in central Israel on Saturday and the army said it had intercepted rockets fired from Yemen. The Iran-backed Houthis have increased their rocket attacks in recent weeks.

The group says the attacks are part of its campaign to pressure Israel and the West over the war in Gaza.

Israel’s attacks on Gaza continue. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that at least 23 people died yesterday.

On Saturday, Palestinian militant spokesman Abu Hamza urged the families of the hostages to ask the Israeli military to stop their strikes in the final hours before the ceasefire, saying it “could lead to the killing of their children”.

Under the first phase of the ceasefire, 33 hostages will be released over the next six weeks in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians arrested by Israel. The rest, including male soldiers, are to be released in a second phase, which will be negotiated in the first phase. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining prisoners until a long-term ceasefire is reached and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops.

According to the ceasefire plan approved by the Cabinet of Ministers and signed by Israel’s national security adviser, the exchange will begin at 16:00 on Sunday. (ET at 9). In each exchange, the prisoners will be released by Israel after the hostages arrive safely.

The plan says that during Phase 1, about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners will be released, in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages, both dead and alive. Among the prisoners, 1,167 are residents of Gaza, who are detained by Israel but did not participate in the attacks carried out on October 7, 2023. At this stage, women and children under the control of Israel from Gaza will be released.

All Palestinian prisoners found guilty of deadly attacks will be deported, either to Gaza or abroad, and barred from returning to Israel or the West Bank. According to the plan, some will be exiled for three years and some permanently.

Major questions remain about the second ceasefire reached during the war, including the names of the 33 hostages who were to be released and who among them are still alive.

Hamas agreed to release three female hostages on day 1 of the deal, four on day 7, and the remaining 26 within the next five weeks.

Palestinian prisoners must also be released. Israel’s Justice Ministry published a list of more than 700 people to be released in the first phase of the deal, saying the release would not begin until 4:00 p.m. local time on Sunday. All the people on the list are either young or female.

Also, in the first phase, Israeli troops must withdraw to a buffer zone about one kilometer wide along Gaza’s borders with Israel.

This will allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes, including Gaza City and northern Gaza. As much of Gaza’s population has been forced into massive, dilapidated tent camps, Palestinians are desperate to return to their homes, many of which have been destroyed or severely damaged by Israel’s campaign.

Omri Miran was among those taken hostage by militants who stormed Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led attacks. Her brother-in-law Moshe Lavi told CBC News on Saturday that Miran would not be among those to be released in the first phase of the deal.

Lavi said all hostages should be released on humanitarian grounds for all the hardships they are facing.

“After 470 days in captivity, imagine if you could believe that someone did not have humanitarian needs? he said.

The largely devastated area should see an increase in humanitarian aid thanks to the deal. Aid trucks lined up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing to Gaza on Friday. Two Egyptian government ministers arrived in the northern Sinai Peninsula on Saturday to oversee preparations for the delivery of aid and to receive the evacuation of wounded patients, the health ministry said.

WATCH | According to the report, the death toll in the war may be higher:

The report says that the reports that the Gaza Strip is dead have been significantly underestimated

The death toll in Gaza in the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war may be 40 percent higher than Hamas officials say, according to a new report published in The Lancet.

Hamas sparked the war with a cross-border attack on Israel that left 1,200 dead and 250 captured. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza.

Israel responded with a devastating onslaught that killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who did not distinguish between civilians and militants but said more than half of the dead were women and children.