Gaza truce negotiators hammer out final details one day before it takes effect

Repairs to Rafah crossing and protection of aid convoys feature in talks held in Cairo on Saturday

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Representatives of Israel and Hamas, along with Egyptian, US and Qatari mediators, held talks in Cairo on Saturday on the finer details of the Gaza ceasefire agreement to ensure its smooth implementation, sources close to discussions told The National.

The deal announced in Doha on Wednesday will take effect at 06.30 GMT on Sunday morning, or 8.30am local time, a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman said after the Israeli government approved the deal in a meeting that ran into the early hours of Saturday.

The six-week ceasefire is seen as the first of a three-stage truce leading to a permanent end to the war. It will be overseen by a main operations room in Cairo, another monitoring centre in the Egyptian port city of Al Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, and one in southern Gaza, the sources said.

A mural in Jerusalem of hostages held in Gaza. The deal includes the exchange of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian detainees. AP

Key points of the agreement to halt 15 months of fighting include the exchange of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian detainees in Israel, the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the edges of Gaza, allowing displaced Gazans to return to their homes in the north of the territory and a significant increase in the amount of humanitarian aid flowing into the war-battered enclave.

The sources said repair teams will start repaving the damaged road between Egypt and Gaza at the Rafah crossing, one of the main aid entry points, as soon as the ceasefire goes into effect. However, humanitarian assistance and seriously wounded Palestinians seeking to leave Gaza for treatment abroad are not expected to be able to pass through for several days.

In the meantime, some essential relief items and some of the injured will be able to pass through the nearby Israeli-run Karam Abu Salem crossing between southern Gaza and Israel.

A team of UN and EU officials will deploy on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing, along with Palestinian representatives of a recently established committee whose members are approved by Israel and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, the sources said.

Armed Palestinian operatives as well as a UN contingent of security guards will accompany the relief convoys into Gaza to protect them against looters, they added.

Arab observers will also join Palestinians at 13 locations across Gaza to ensure that displaced Palestinians returning to the north of the territory are not armed. Israeli forces will remotely monitor their movement, most likely through security cameras and sensors, said the sources.

Makeshift tents in Bureij, central Gaza. Most of the enclave's 2.3 million population has been displaced. AFP

The war has so far seen a single brief truce at the end of November 2023, the month after Hamas led an attack on southern Israeli in which nearly 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken back to Gaza as hostages. About 100 hostages were exchanged for nearly 300 Palestinian prisoners over the space of a week, before fighting resumed.

Israel retaliated against the Hamas attack with a military offensive that has killed nearly 47,000 people in Gaza, according to local health authorities, including more than 100 killed since the new ceasefire deal was announced. Thousands more are believed to buried under the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli bombardment and shelling, while most of the enclave's 2.3 million population has been displaced.

Infrastructure and medical facilities have been badly damaged, while Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid have left Gazans struggling with shortages of food, water and medicines, and without adequate shelter.

Under the provisions of the deal announced on Wednesday, Gaza will receive about 60,000 caravans and 200,000 tents to house Palestinians who lost their homes.