If there are no last minute unforeseen events – in these lands nothing is less foreseen than an unforeseen event – Israel and the fundamentalist group Hamas begin this Thursday a four-day truce with the option of extending it depending on the expansion of the list of Israeli hostages who can return to their homes. They will not be all 239 in the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad after being kidnapped on October 7, but perhaps not just the 50 agreed upon in the agreement stitched together between bombs, evacuations, accusations and threats by Qatar, Egypt and the US.
As bombing and fighting intensified in the Gaza Strip and Israel and Hamas confirmed 10 a.m. as the time for the ceasefire to come into force, the Lebanese pro-Iran group Hezbollah He noted that he added to the calm before its great enemy on a border that has experienced the most explosive month since the 2006 war.
The head of Mossad, David Barnea, was in Qatar to oversee the details of a complex and unprecedented device in the region and to receive the first list of chosen hostages. After 48 days of traumatic captivity, the gradual process of liberation of 30 children and 20 women (eight are their mothers) in a first batch of the four scheduled until Sunday. The ceasefire window could remain open beyond the four agreed days (depending on the parties and mediators) although it could also close much sooner (depending on the combat front full of tunnels).
In exchange for the return of dozens of its own, Israel will suspend massive military pressure on Gaza and will release a minimum of 150 Palestinian prisoners– among them dozens of minors under 18 years of age and women – convicted of belonging to a terrorist group, inciting violence, attacks or attempted attacks. The Israeli authorities released the list of 300 prisoners likely to be released if Hamas releases more children and women. The established ratio is three Palestinians for every Israeli. 19 of them were convicted of attempted murder as a 14-year-old Palestinian woman seriously injured an Israeli woman living in her neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Or Israa Jaabis sentenced to eleven years in prison for detonating a gas cylinder against a police post, injuring an officer in 2015. As expected in a matter of strategic importance, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal against his release presented by an association of victims of terrorism.
The dramatic day will begin somewhere in the Palestinian enclave when Hamas moves amid great confidentiality and mistrust 10 Israelis to Egypt. It will do so taking advantage of the time slot between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. in which Israel cannot activate reconnaissance drones. At the Rafah border crossing, the International Red Cross will receive the children and women who will be handed over to Israeli soldiers, including doctors. At that time, the Army will cease its attacks, pausing the response to “Black Saturday” to “destroy Hamas and return the kidnapped” in an offensive that has caused thousands of deaths – among civilians and militiamen – and destruction in the Gaza Strip.