The ceasefire agreement does not come into force until Sunday, and reports from on the ground in Gaza indicate that the Israeli army has continued its bombardment of the territory in the meantime.
The Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence says Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 20 people since the deal was announced, including an attack targeting a residential block in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City which killed 12 people and injured 20 others. The Israeli military has yet to comment on the reports.
Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif says “the pace of bombing has increased dramatically in recent hours”, describing it as “terrifying”.
It is only if the perspective is broadened away from Gaza that Netanyahu and the Israeli military can claim, by deciding to broaden the war with intensified attacks on Hezbollah and Iranian targets, that they changed its course and character. The chain of events that led to the annihilation of the Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon – and then to the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and so to Iran’s loss of its crown jewel – may be sketchy, but it is clearly discernible.
Indeed, the weakening of Iran is probably the biggest regional impact of the war in Gaza. Biden had a point this week in claiming that, all told, Iran “is weaker than it has been for decades”. He elaborated: “Iran’s air defences are in shambles. Their main proxy, Hezbollah, is badly wounded, and as we tested Iran’s willingness to revive the nuclear deal, we kept the pressure with sanctions. Now Iran’s economy is in desperate straits.” A 35-year tack to build a defence strategy around a proxy army had been eviscerated in a matter of months.
The change has had an accelerator effect on Tehran’s foreign-policy elite. Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian reformist president, and his strategic adviser, Javad Zarif, are placing numerous olive branches at Trump’s feet.
The fissiparous nature of Iranian internal politics makes it hard for Iran to deliver a consistent message to the west, however, and at the moment there are not many diplomats in France, UK or Germany yet convinced by Iran’s offer to negotiate a new nuclear deal. Iran has a reputation for buying time by offering fruitless talks. Moreover, Trump’s top team is deeply hostile to Iran.
In Lebanon, two years of paralysis have ended and a new, elected leadership will listen to Iran-backed Hezbollah, but not be beholden to it.
But the new prime minister, Nawaf Salam, is the former president of the international court of justice and fresh from delivering the landmark legal verdict that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal and must end within a year. He will be a standing reminder that Israel has unfinished business in front of the international courts.
The imminent transition of power in Washington has played a role in a ceasefire deal being reached between Israel and Hamas, and both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have been eager to take the credit.
Delivering his final address to the nation from the Oval Office, Biden opened his speech by referencing the deal.
“This plan was developed and negotiated by my team and will be largely implemented by the incoming administration,” he said.
“That’s why I told my team to keep the incoming administration fully informed, because that’s how it should be, working together as Americans.”
The ceasefire agreement does not come into force until Sunday, and reports from on the ground in Gaza indicate that the Israeli army has continued its bombardment of the territory in the meantime.
The Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence says Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 20 people since the deal was announced, including an attack targeting a residential block in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City which killed 12 people and injured 20 others. The Israeli military has yet to comment on the reports.
Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif says “the pace of bombing has increased dramatically in recent hours”, describing it as “terrifying”.
Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor
Security for Israel, secretary of state Antony Blinken argued, had to include a credible political horizon for the Palestinians, or else Hamas “or something equally abhorrent” will “grow back”. He said the country “must abandon the myth they can carry out de facto annexation, without cost and consequence to Israel’s democracy, to its standing, to its security”. Yet, he complained, “Israel’s government has systematically undermined the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas: the Palestinian Authority”.
If Israel wanted the prize of greater security, he said, that lay through forging greater integration across the region, specifically through normalisation with Saudi Arabia. He said that was ready to go, but only if Palestinians were allowed to live in a state of their own, and not as “a non-people”.
Trump’s return to the White House may have helped pressure Benjamin Netanyahu into a ceasefire, but not to a particular peace. The incoming US president is unlikely to pick up Blinken’s plan for a reformed and UN-monitored Palestinian Authority (PA) to oversee governance of a unified Gaza and West Bank. Israel for its part will risk a bigger vacuum by acting on its commitment not to co-operate with Unrwa, the UN agency for the Palestinians, and other NGOs.
Nor is there any certainty that Palestine will have the quality of leadership required to take sole administrative charge of Gaza. The PA, led by the ageing Mahmoud Abbas, is increasingly reviled on the West Bank and has failed to bury its differences with Hamas in talks in Moscow, Beijing and Cairo.
There may be no winners in war, but history suggests combatants are often eager to convince the world otherwise.
The ending of the 15-month conflict in Gaza may prove an exception. The sacrifice has been so great, the misery so complete, and the ultimate future for Gaza so uncertain that few can claim with certainty that this was all worthwhile, or likely to benefit Israel’s security in the long term. The damage to Israel’s reputation may last decades.
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International aid organisations have welcomed the ceasefire deal and pledged to scale up support.
“This is long overdue for the children and families of Gaza who have endured more than a year of bombardment and deprivation, and for the hostages in Gaza and their families in Israel who have suffered so much,” Unicef said in a statement on Wednesday.
Unicef said at least 14,500 children have died and the war has left “17,000 unaccompanied or separated from their parents”. The organisation called on both parties to “fully adhere” to the ceasefire and to allow the “necessary level of aid into Gaza” to treat children suffering from malnutrition and vaccinate 420,000 children under 5 years old.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote “peace is the best medicine” on social media platform X.
“Too many lives have been lost and too many families have suffered. We hope all parties will respect the deal and work towards lasting peace,” he continued.
World Food Programme chief Cindy McCain stressed the importance of opened borders and increased security for humanitarian staff.
“We need security for team members and our partners, including during aid convoys. Humanitarians MUST be protected. We need more humanitarian staff allowed into Gaza. And we need urgent funding to reach everyone in need quickly,” she said in a statement.
The Associated Press has taken a look at some of the key players who negotiated the deal. The United States, Egypt and Qatar have mediated the long-running efforts to halt the fighting in the ravaged Palestinian territory, often coming close to a deal before a frustrating breakdown in negotiations, until the final breakthrough this week.
David Barnea
The head of Israel’s spy agency headed up Israel’s negotiation team throughout the negotiation process. Worked alongside the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and top political and military advisers to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ronen Bar
The head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency also has been involved in negotiations for months. Bar’s agency handles matters relating to Palestinian security prisoners. Bar has led the agency since 2021. Just days after the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel that launched the war, he took responsibility for failing to thwart the militants and said investigations into what happened would come after the war.
Brett McGurk
President Joe Biden’s top Middle East adviser has been putting together a draft of the deal from the discussions with the two sides as the lead negotiator in the Israel-Hamas negotiations. McGurk has been a fixture in US Middle East policy for more than two decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Steve Witkoff
President-elect Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East has met separately in recent weeks with Netanyahu and Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, another key mediator. Witkoff, a Florida real estate investor and co-chair of Trump’s inaugural committee, has kept in contact with Biden’s foreign policy team as the incoming Trump and outgoing Biden administrations coordinated on the deal.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani
Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister led his country’s pivotal mediation efforts in the stop-start negotiations. He has been a key communicator with Hamas throughout the process, as Israel and Hamas have not communicated directly.
Hassan Rashad
The director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Agency was also a liaison with Hamas throughout the talks. Rashad took office in October 2024, replacing former chief intelligence official Abbas Kamel, who led the negotiations during the first ceasefire in November 2023. Several rounds of negotiations have occurred in Cairo, and the mediators will move to the Egyptian capital Thursday for further talks on implementing the deal.
Khalil al-Hayya
The acting head of Hamas’ political bureau and the militant group’s chief negotiator is based in Qatar but does not meet directly with Israeli or American officials, communicating instead through Egyptian and Qatari mediators. His role increased in importance after Israeli soldiers killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza ceasefire clinched Wednesday was a bittersweet victory for US President Joe Biden days before he hands over the White House to Donald Trump, who claimed credit – and, most experts say, deserves some, reports AFP.
Biden first proposed the outlines of the deal between Israel and Hamas on 31 May but diplomatic efforts repeatedly came up short, even when secretary of state Antony Blinken warned in Tel Aviv in August that it may have been the last chance for a deal.
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff marched into Netanyahu’s office on Saturday, forcing the Israeli leader to break the sabbath, and pushed to seal the ceasefire.
The timing has echoes of a 1981 deal on US hostages in Iran, freed from 444 days of captivity moments after Republican Ronald Reagan succeeded Democrat Jimmy Carter, although this time the outgoing and incoming administrations worked together.
In scenes unprecedented in recent US history, Witkoff and Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk met jointly with the emir of Qatar – a key intermediary between Israel and Hamas – when sealing the deal.
Trump quickly boasted that the “epic” deal “could only have happened” due to his election as US president in November.
Asked if Trump deserved credit, Biden quipped: “Is that a joke?”
Speaking hours before a previously scheduled farewell address to the nation, the outgoing president said he included the Trump team in negotiations so that the United States was “speaking with one voice.”
Biden faced heated criticism from the left of his Democratic Party during its unsuccessful election year over his staunch support of Israel since Palestinian group Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack.
Biden authorised billions of dollars in weapons for Israel’s relentless retaliatory campaign on Gaza, despite criticizing the strategic US ally for the civilian death toll – which authorities in Gaza say is in the tens of thousands.
“The Biden administration was terrified of the political cost of being seen to be pressing Israel in any way,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now.
Trump, while vowing to be even more pro-Israel, was able to make clear to Netanyahu that “I do not want to inherit this,” Whitson said.
“It made me think that all of this would have been possible months ago and we could have saved thousands of Palestinian lives,” she said.
Trump had warned Hamas of “hell to pay” if it did not agree to a deal, which includes in its first phase the release of 33 hostages seized on 7 October.
David Khalfa, an expert on Israel at the Jean Jaures Foundation in Paris, said that Trump’s unpredictability likely affected Hamas. He also pointed to Netanyahu’s political position heading a hard-right but shaky coalition government.
“There is today an ideological alignment between the American populist right and the Israeli prime minister. So he has very weak room to manoeuvre against a Trump who doesn’t face the pressures of reelection,” said Khalfa.
Iraq has hailed the truce deal between Israel and Hamas and urged immediate aid deliveries to Gaza, AFP reports.
The foreign ministry stressed the “need to immediately allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian territories” and “intensify international efforts to rebuild” areas damaged during Israel’s Gaza offensive.
Here’s an explainer on what we know so far regarding the phased truce announced between Hamas and Israel, pausing the 15-month conflict with the aim of ending the war.
Key mediator Qatar said that 33 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza would be released in the first stage of a ceasefire deal aimed at ending the war in the Palestinian territory.
Israel earlier said it would release about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in the first stage of a Gaza truce agreement, Israeli and Palestinian sources reported Tuesday.
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At least 12 people were killed and several wounded in shelling in a residential block in northern Gaza, Reuters is reporting, citing the Palestinian civil defence.
The report came after the announcement of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which does not come into effect until Sunday.
The US hopes to see more than 500 trucks a day of humanitarian aid entering Gaza during the ceasefire, a US state department spokesperson said.
Matthew Miller, at a briefing earlier today, acknowledged that it has been “very difficult” to distribute aid within Gaza because of the security situation. He said:
We’re looking at a massive infusion of trucks. … It won’t happen overnight, but we want to get up to over 500 trucks a day.
Colombian president Gustavo Petro called the agreement “good news for humanity” and stated that “Colombia will be willing to send medical teams to Gaza to treat injured children.”
The leftist, who did not mention Israel in his brief post on X, had severed diplomatic relations with the Israeli goverment in May of last year “for having a genocidal president.” In response, the then foreign minister (now Defence minister), Israel Katz, said, “History will remember that Gustavo Petro decided to side with the most despicable monsters known to mankind.”
Colombia used to be one of Israel’s closest partners in Latin America, but relations between the two nations have cooled since Petro was elected in 2022.
Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Argentina’s far-right leader, Javier Milei, have yet to comment. The two have taken opposing stances since the conflict began.
This week, the Argentinean was awarded Israel’s prestigious 2025 Genesis Prize in recognition of his support for the country.
He has already pledged – both during his campaign and after being elected, during a visit to Israel – to move Argentina’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In November, when the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, Milei expressed his “profound disagreement,” stating that the “decision disregards Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself against constant attacks from terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Brazil, on the other hand, has strained – though not severed – relations with Israel since the beginning of last year, when Lula referred to the actions in Gaza as “genocide.” In response, the Brazilian president was declared “persona non grata” by the Israeli government. Since then, Lula has described Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon as a “massacre” and “unnecessary slaughter.”
