Israel-Hamas ceasefire latest: Gaza truce will take effect Sunday morning as Israel to release 737 prisoners – UK Times

During the darkest times, when we realised that aid and food weren’t coming, my family and I tried to sustain ourselves with anything we could find. We tried bird food and rabbit food and even tried to grind up cat food. In the first days of this famine, I saw people going to Nabulsi Square, where aid trucks full of wheat flour would distribute quantities that were only enough for a small fraction of us. I would see people dying in attempts to get some flour for their families, but some did come away with flour. At first, I thought that I wouldn’t die for a bag of flour. Later, I realised I was dying of starvation anyway.

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According to the ceasefire plan, approved by the Cabinet and signed by Israel’s national security adviser, the exchange will begin Sunday at 4pm local time (2pm GMT). During each exchange, prisoners will be released by Israel after the hostages have arrived safely.

The plan says that during phase one, some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners will be released, in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages, both alive and dead. Among the prisoners, 1,167 are residents in Gaza who were held by Israel but were not involved in Oct. 7. All women and children under 19 from Gaza held by Israel will be freed during this phase.

All Palestinian prisoners who were convicted of deadly attacks will be exiled, either to Gaza or abroad, and barred from returning to Israel or the West Bank. Some will be exiled for three years and others permanently, according to the plan.

Lebanon’s new president Joseph Aoun stressed to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday the urgency of an Israeli military withdrawal as stipulated by a ceasefire deal that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war in November.

According to a statement by the Lebanese presidency on X, Aoun told Guterres during a meeting in Beirut that continued Israeli breaches were a violation of Lebanese sovereignty and the agreed ceasefire deal.

The ceasefire, which took effect on Nov. 27 and was brokered by the United States and France, requires Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon within 60 days, and for Hezbollah to remove all its fighters and weapons from the south.

Guterres said the U.N. would exert utmost efforts to secure an Israeli withdrawal within the set deadline under the ceasefire terms, according to the statement.

He had said on Friday the Israeli military’s continued occupation of territory in south Lebanon and the conduct of military operations in Lebanese territory were violations of a U.N. resolution upon which the ceasefire is based.

Israel’s military offensive on the Gaza Strip has killed at least 46,899 Palestinians and injured 110,725 since Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said in an update on Saturday.

23 Palestinians were killed and 83 were injured over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said.

Antonio Guterres said the international community will back Lebanon “for what we believe will be a speedy recovery of this country, making it again the center of the Middle East.”

The UN Secretary-General made his comments on Saturday following a meeting in Beirut with Lebanon’s newly elected president Joseph Aoun. A new prime minister was also named to form a government following Aoun’s election last week.

Lebanon had been without a president for 26 months, part of internal divisions in the small nation.

Guterres said that naming a president and prime minister makes it possible to consolidate the Lebanese institutions and to deploy the Lebanese army across the country, including areas from where Israeli troops will withdraw.

“As soon as the conflict ends, reconstruction begins,” Guterres said.

The US-brokered ceasefire is an attempt to end the Israel-Hezbollah war that has killed more than 4,000 people and wounded over 16,000 in Lebanon. Part of the deal is that Hezbollah will pull out from the border area with Israel and only Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers can have armed presence along the Israeli border.

Israel’s Justice Ministry has published a list of over 700 Palestinian prisoners who are to be released under the ceasefire deal pausing the war with Hamas militants in Gaza.

The list came just hours after Israel’s full Cabinet approved the ceasefire deal.

The Justice Ministry said the Palestinian prisoners would be released no earlier than 4 pm. local time on Sunday, the day the exchange is set to begin. The list includes members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups, some of whom are serving lifetime sentences and are convicted of serious offenses such as murder.

The list did not appear to include Marwan Barghouti, the 64-year-old who is the highest-profile prisoner held by Israel and seen by many Palestinians as a prime candidate to become their president in the future. He was a leader in the West Bank during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

Hamas has demanded that Israel release him as part of any ceasefire agreement, a possibility Israeli officials have ruled out.

In a press statement, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said they would now stop until the last of the hostages had been returned, with the first group set to be released on Sunday.

The group said: “We, the families of the 98 hostages, welcome the agreement intended to bring all hostages home.

“This represents a significant and crucial advancement that brings us closer to the moment when we will see all hostages return home—the living to rehabilitate among their families, and the deceased for proper burial.

“Today also marks Kfir Bibas’ second birthday—both of his birthdays have been spent in Hamas captivity. This unconscionable tragedy must end now. We urgently call for swift arrangements to ensure all phases of the deal are implemented, and emphasize that negotiations for the next phases must begin before day 16.

“We wish to express our profound gratitude to President-elect Trump, President Biden, both administrations, and the international mediators for making this possible.

“Now, after 470 days of our family members being held in Hamas tunnels, we are closer than ever to reuniting with our loved ones. We call upon the public to attend tonight’s main rally at Hostages Square and gatherings throughout the country to demand the guarantee of returning the last hostage!”

Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Saturday that the mechanism of the release of Israeli hostages it holds in Gaza would depend on the number of Palestinian prisoners Israel would free.

In a statement, Hamas said the list of Palestinian prisoners to be released would be published one day before the exchange under terms of its ceasefire deal reached with Israel on Wednesday.

The ceasefire is set to come into effect at 8.30am local time (6.30am GMT) on Sunday, the Qatari foreign ministry spokesman said.

Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem congratulated Palestinians on Saturday for the Gaza ceasefire deal, saying it proved the “persistence of resistance” against Israel in his first comments since Israel and Hamas reached the accord on Wednesday.

“This deal, which was unchanged from what was proposed in May 2024, proves the persistence of resistance groups, which took what they wanted while Israel was not able to take what it sought,” the leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group said in a speech.

Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire in a conflict parallel to the Gaza war in November.