Live updates: Dozens killed in Gaza as Israel delays key vote on truce – CNN
• The Israeli Prime Minister’s office confirmed that a deal has been agreed upon with Hamas to release the hostages held in Gaza. The agreement, which US officials expect to take effect Sunday, would see a pause in fighting in Gaza and lead to the phased release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered Israel’s security cabinet to meet on Friday, after which the government will convene to approve the deal. Here’s what we know about it.
• Israeli bombardments killed dozens of people in Gaza since the announcement of the deal, marking the highest daily death toll in over a week.
• International aid agencies welcomed the deal and vowed to scale up their work in Gaza. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees called for “rapid, unhindered and uninterrupted humanitarian access” to the strip to relieve the suffering caused by war.
Our live coverage of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal has moved here.
The ceasefire and hostage deal reached by Israel and Hamas is a “huge milestone,” but there’s still “a lot of work to be done” on its implementation, a US envoy said.
US officials expect the deal for a pause in fighting in Gaza that will lead to the phased release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners to take effect in the coming days after Israel confirmed Thursday it had reached an agreement with Hamas.
“It was hard fought. This was a very difficult deal to reach. And our team did a great job,” US envoy Amos Hochstein told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
The hostages will start to “come home in a couple of days,” Hochstein said. “And then there’s a very large task of the implementation and getting to phase two. So there’s a lot of work still to be done. But this is a huge milestone.”
Hochstein said he’d “personally stay away” from politicizing which parties take credit for the deal, but added that US President Joe Biden’s “unprecedented” invitation for US envoy Steve Witkoff – a longtime friend of President-elect Donald Trump – to join chief negotiator Brett McGurk was vital in securing the accord.
“The only thing that President Biden wanted to achieve until the last minute was to be able to get the hostages home and to stop the carnage in this crisis that has killed so many Israelis and Palestinians. And that’s the most important thing,” Hochstein said.
“I think it was important to have the incoming team with Steve Witkoff there to be able to show everyone that it’s team America, it’s one team. And ultimately the most important thing is that these hostages are going to come home on Sunday or latest Monday morning.”
The Israeli Prime Minister’s office confirmed that a deal has been agreed upon with Hamas to release the hostages held in Gaza.
Earlier Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he wouldn’t comment until all details are finalized.
The agreement, announced by mediators Qatar, the United States, and Egypt on Wednesday, would see a pause in fighting in Gaza and lead to the phased release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
Netanyahu has ordered Israel’s security cabinet to meet on Friday, after which the government will convene to approve the deal.
“The State of Israel is committed to achieving all the goals of the war, including the return of all our hostages – both living and dead,” the Prime Minister’s Office statement said.
The implementation of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal “better be done before I take the oath of office,” US President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday, as he reiterated his claim that the agreement would not have been possible without the work of his incoming administration.
Trump has repeatedly indicated he would prefer to avoid inheriting the Israel-Hamas war as he prepares to take office on January 20, and analysts say his impending return to the White House had injected renewed urgency into negotiations on a deal that had effectively been on the table for months.
“If we weren’t involved in this deal, the deal would have never happened. No deal would have happened, and the hostages would never have probably seen life again, but they certainly wouldn’t have been released for a long time,” Trump told The Dan Bongino Show podcast.
“No, we changed the course of it, and we changed it fast, and frankly, it better be done before I take the oath of office, and I assume it is now, you know, we shook hands and we signed certain documents, but it better be done.”
Trump and outgoing US President Joe Biden both took full credit following the announcement of the ceasefire deal Wednesday after the two American administrations worked together to mediate the truce.
The cooperation between the two camps was “almost unprecedented,” a senior Biden administration official said after the deal was clinched, made possible by a rare intersection of interests between bitter rivals who both saw an opening following Trump’s election victory.
However, asked by a reporter whether he or Trump deserved credit for the deal, Biden replied, “Is that a joke?”
Biden’s response was “ungracious,” Trump told The Dan Bongino Show.
Israeli strikes have killed 86 and injured 258 since the ceasefire deal was announced on Wednesday, according to a spokesperson from Gaza’s Civil Defense. The daily death toll in the period immediately after the ceasefire announcement is the highest in over a week.
The dead include 23 children, spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said in his Thursday press release.
Earlier today, the Israel Defense Forces said it struck approximately “50 terror targets” across Gaza.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to be “afraid or intimidated,” saying the priority is to implement a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
“I say to Benjamin Netanyahu, don’t be afraid or intimidated, you will get every safety net you need to make the hostage deal. This is more important than any disagreement we’ve ever had,” Lapid said in a post on X on Thursday.
Lapid’s message to Netanyahu came shortly after Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben Gvir, threatened to pull his party from Israel’s governing coalition if the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal went through.
It also came after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism Party on Thursday called for “Israel’s return to the war in order to destroy Hamas and the return of all the hostages… immediately after the conclusion of the first phase of the deal” for it to remain in government, in a statement.
If both Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s parties withdraw from Netanyahu’s governing coalition, the government could collapse.
Israel’s cabinet expects to hold a full vote on the ceasefire-hostage agreement on Saturday, according to an Israeli official.
The official said the smaller security cabinet would still convene on Friday to vote on the deal.
When asked about the newly scheduled Saturday cabinet vote to seal the ceasefire deal in Israel, Biden’s national security advisor John Kirby told CNN that the White House is “aware of these issues and are working through them with the Israeli government.”
“We are confident these implementing details can be hammered out and that the deal will move forward this weekend.”
Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on his Thursday evening program, Kirby further said that the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal is still “on a good path here to start implementation by the end of the weekend.”
“All the parameters have been agreed to. We’ve ironed out these last bit of details that needed to be flattened out and fixed. We believe we’re on a good path here to start implementation by the end of the weekend. So all systems are go right now,” Kirby told Tapper. “We are seeing nothing that would tell us that this is going to get derailed at this point.”
Israel’s cabinet expects to hold a full vote on the ceasefire-hostage agreement on Saturday, according to an Israeli official.
The smaller security cabinet will still convene Friday to vote on the deal, the official said.
Remember: The cabinet meeting was initially expected to take place on Thursday, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that last-minute hurdles were still being resolved at the negotiating table in Doha.
The prime minister’s office previously indicated that the cabinet would only convene once those issues were resolved.
Israel’s defense ministry and military are prepared to provide “emotional support” and “mental health care” to released hostages, the ministry announced Thursday.
Defense Minister Israel Katz and an official from the Israel Defense Forces said that “all Ministry capabilities be made available for implementing the hostage release deal, receiving the returning hostages, and supporting their families.”
The Ministry of Defense will emphasize “close medical and mental health care and support, and will enhance emotional support and guidance for all families” of returning hostages, the statement continued.
The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said his militant group would stop its attacks on Israel and cargo ships in the Red Sea so long as the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is maintained.
“We will continue to follow up on the stages of implementing the agreement, and any Israeli retreat or massacres or siege, we will be ready immediately to provide military support to the Palestinian people,” al-Houthi warned in a speech Thursday.
Those operations include a variety of tactics aimed at intimidating Israel and squeezing its Western allies. Most prominent are Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea and occasional rocket and drone fire toward Israeli cities.
Though Israel’s sophisticated air defenses have mostly swatted away Houthi missiles and drones, the militant group’s cargo ship attacks have led to a protracted crisis in the Red Sea’s busy shipping corridor, with some ships forced to avoid the convenient Suez Canal in favor of a longer trip around Africa.
Israel, in turn, has bombed Yemen and threatened to kill Houthi leaders in retaliation for the group’s attacks.
Israel’s minister of national security Itamar Ben Gvir says his party will withdraw from Israel’s governing coalition if the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal goes through.
“This deal teaches them (Hamas) that they can take hostages and attack, and at the end of the day, they can get what they want,” he said in a news conference Thursday.
Ben Gvir, a member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, threatened to resign earlier this week over the deal. He has also called on Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to join him. Smotrich is a member of another far-right party, the Religious Zionism Party.
Some context: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs the support of both parties in parliament to keep his coalition from collapsing.
If Ben Gvir’s party, with its six legislative seats, leaves the governing coalition, Netanyahu still holds onto a narrow majority. But, if Smotrich’s party also withdraws its seven seats from the coalition, it will topple Netanyahu’s government.
A minister in Israel’s right-wing Likud party, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has threatened to resign if the country withdraws from the Philadelphi corridor, as outlined in phase one of the ceasefire agreement.
Amichai Chikli, minister of diaspora and combating antisemitism, is the first member of the Likud party to threaten to quit over the details of the agreement.
The minister cited Israel’s withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor, the narrow strip of land along the Egypt-Gaza border, as the key reason behind his announcement. The corridor proved to be a sticking point in ceasefire negotiations.
“I hereby undertake that if, God forbid, there is a withdrawal from the Philadelphi Axis (before the war goals are achieved), or if we do not return to fighting in order to complete the war goals – I will resign from my position as a government minister,” Chikli said in a social media post Thursday.
While Chikli is the first Likud minister to officially threaten his resignation, as a minister in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, he will not get to vote on the agreement. The Israeli cabinet is scheduled to convene Friday morning to approve the ceasefire and hostage release deal, according to an Israeli official.
Earlier Thursday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism Party threatened to quit the government if the prime minister doesn’t return to war in Gaza after the first phase of a ceasefire-hostage agreement.
The move by the party, which holds a key position in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, could be the catalyst that leads to the prime minister losing his majority. If the prime minister gives in to the party’s demands, the ceasefire agreement could collapse before it takes effect on Sunday.
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have killed 83 people since the announcement of the ceasefire and hostages deal, a spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defense said Thursday.
Of those killed, 23 were children and 27 were women, Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense, said.
Earlier, the Israel Defense Forces said it struck approximately “50 terror targets” across the Gaza Strip.
In his final press conference at the State Department, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the incoming Trump administration stands behind the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
“I think being very clear with all concerned that the incoming administration supported, endorsed and would carry forward its responsibilities under the agreement, that was an important thing to do,” said Blinken, who in particular praised President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff for his work with the outgoing Biden administration on the deal.
Blinken defended the Biden administration’s decision to involve the Trump administration in the final negotiations before the new administration was in office.
“Virtually everything that now needs to be implemented under the agreement will be implemented under the Trump administration, and it was very important for the parties to know that the Trump administration stood behind the agreement that we negotiated and that President Biden put forward,” said Blinken.
Blinken also said it’s not important “who gets the credit” for the final agreement.
“The important thing is getting the result, and that’s exactly what we’ve gotten,” said Blinken.
The ramping up of humanitarian aid into Gaza to 600 trucks a day, as outlined in the ceasefire and hostage release deal agreed between Hamas and Israel, would be “only a start” in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, a UN humanitarian official has said.
Security conditions and “criminal gangs” could impact humanitarian agencies’ ability to deliver aid to the battered enclave, the UN’s Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza Sigrid Kaag told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Thursday.
“I fear that in the first days after the formal announcement and start of a ceasefire, security conditions on the ground, as well as our ability to deliver in as free a manner as possible, they might be impacted,” Kaag said. “But this doesn’t stop us, and it certainly doesn’t deter us,” she added.
The UN official echoed earlier calls by humanitarian groups for rapid, unhindered, and uninterrupted access to Gaza.
“That means fast processing, visa approvals for staff, the checking of different types of goods, anything that has been [a] bureaucratic impediment,” Kaag detailed.
Last month, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that only 2,205 aid trucks had entered Gaza in the month of December, or roughly 71 per day.
Israeli bombings in Gaza have killed at least 81 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, according to health authorities in the enclave, as emergency crews reported heavy and intense strikes overnight into Thursday.
At least 188 other people have been injured, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Thursday. The number of people killed by Israeli attacks over the past day marked the highest daily death toll in 11 days, according to a CNN tally of recent figures from the health ministry.
Local emergency crews described scenes of relentless bombardment since Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire and hostage release deal on Wednesday.
At least 77 Palestinians were killed – including 21 children and 25 women – since the ceasefire was announced, Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense, told CNN. More than 250 other people were injured, he said.
The Israeli military said it “conducted strikes on approximately 50 terror targets across the Gaza Strip” over the past day. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN that a Hamas militant who participated in the Nova Music Festival attack – the deadliest massacre on October 7 – was among those killed.
Among those killed on Thursday were two Palestinians at a school where displaced people sought refuge, in the Zeitoun neighborhood, central Gaza, according to the civil defense.
The IDF told CNN that it conducted a strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside terrorist infrastructure in a compound that previously served as the Al-Falah school in the Zeitoun area.
In northern Gaza, Israeli aircraft struck a house near a mosque, killing at least two people, the civil defense said.
The IDF told CNN that it “targeted a Hamas terrorist in that area around that time.”
Basal, the civil defense spokesperson, told CNN in a voice message: “Every time there is talk about a truce or a ceasefire, we witness an escalation in the intensity of the bombardment,”
The onslaught overnight came after an agreement was reached between Hamas and Israel on Wednesday – with the first phase expected to start on Sunday and last for six weeks. Human rights groups welcomed the news and ramped up calls for a permanent ceasefire.
This post has been updated.
The Israeli cabinet is scheduled to convene Friday morning to approve the ceasefire and hostage release deal, an Israeli official said.
The cabinet meeting will come a day later than it was initially scheduled to take place, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that last-minute hurdles were still being resolved at the negotiating table in Doha.
The decision to convene the cabinet on Friday indicates that those outstanding issues have been resolved.
The prime minister’s office previously indicated that the cabinet would only convene once those issues were resolved.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s final press conference at the State Department was interrupted by two protesters, who were escorted out of the briefing room after protesting US support for Israeli “genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza.
“I’m happy to address questions when we get a chance, thank you,” said Blinken as the first protestor continued to shout about the US sending weapons to Israel.
Other members of the press could be heard encouraging Blinken to continue with his remarks despite the interruption.
The man was seated toward the back and stood up, recording his interaction as he yelled at Blinken before being escorted out by members of Blinken’s press team.
Blinken was again interrupted multiple times by an independent journalist who was also escorted from the room after yelling about US support for Israel.
“Please sir, respect the process. We’ll have an opportunity to take questions in a few minutes,” said Blinken as the second protestor was escorted out of the room after calling Blinken a “criminal.”
Blinken maintained he would be taking questions later and did so a few minutes after the interruptions.
The first protestor appeared to be Max Blumenthal, the editor of a small independent news outlet called The Grayzone, who posted the video the interruption his X account. The second protestor was independent journalist Sam Husseini.
This post has been updated.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he is “confident” and “fully” expects that the ceasefire and hostage deal will go into effect on Sunday, despite a delay of a vote in Israel on the agreement.
“Look, it’s not exactly surprising that in a process, in a negotiation that has been this challenging and this fraught, you may get a loose end. We’re tying up that loose end as we speak,” Blinken said at a press conference Thursday.
“I’ve been on the phone in one way or another all morning with (Biden’s Middle East negotiator) Brett McGurk, with our Qatari friends, and I’m very confident that this is moving forward and we’ll see the start of implementation of the agreement on Sunday,” Blinken said.
Israel on Thursday morning delayed a cabinet vote on the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal, blaming Hamas for reneging on parts of the agreement.
More than a dozen Palestinians wrapped in shrouds and blankets covered the floor of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on Thursday, after Israeli forces unleashed a wave of aerial attacks overnight.
CNN footage from the medical facility, in northern Gaza, showed relatives, including elderly men, kneeling over the bodies of the deceased. In some scenes, blood stains can be seen seeping through the cloths. In another scene, rows of Palestinian men line up to perform Janazah, the Islamic funeral prayer.
At least 53 bodies – including 18 women, 18 children, 14 men and three elderly people – have arrived at Al-Ahli hospital since the ceasefire and hostage release deal was reached on Wednesday night, according to the hospital director, Dr. Fadel Naim. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN they “conducted strikes on approximately 50 terror targets across the Gaza Strip” over the past day.
Ali Asaliyah, a man displaced from Jabalya, just north of Gaza City, told CNN his brother-in-law was killed by bombardment on a residential block in Sheikh Radwan, in Gaza City. Three girls and a boy with disabilities were also killed, he said.
“They were martyred through no fault of their own, completely powerless,” Asaliyah told CNN. “From the moment they announced a ceasefire, the Israelis heavily bombed residential blocks… We are all targeted in Gaza. We are all civilians. We don’t have weapons, nor are we affiliated with the resistance,” he said.
Abu Hani Alloush, who is elderly, told CNN from the hospital that he was sitting at home on Wednesday evening when his house came falling down on him shortly after it was struck. “We are waiting for the truce, hoping those who are missing and those displaced will return,” he said. “People are dying every minute… We consider them martyrs, and we say, ‘indeed we belong to God, and indeed to Him we return.’”
Khader Al Za’anoun of Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, contributed to this report. CNN’s Lauren Izso contributed reporting.
Israeli bombardment killed a Palestinian human rights worker, his wife and their two young daughters in northern Gaza early Thursday, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza-based NGO.
Ihab Marwan Kamal Faisal, 33, his wife Hanin Jamal Al-Dahdouh, 29, and their two daughters – Reem, 6, and Najma, 3 – were killed by the attack in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, the PCHR said.
The family had been seeking refuge at the house, the group added.
CNN has reached out to the Israeli military for comment.
Months earlier, two of Faisal’s brothers were killed by Israeli bombing and two of his wife’s brothers were killed in another bombing in Gaza City, the organization said.
“Words cannot describe my feelings and the feelings of my colleagues towards this ongoing brutality against our people and against our colleagues,” Raji Sourani, a lawyer and the director of the PCHR, said in statement.
“He was a man of good character and commitment and was dedicated to his work in the darkest and most dangerous circumstances,” he added. “The brutality of the occupation is evident in every detail of our lives, killing our children and killing our dreams.”
At the 11th hour, the day after the leaders of Qatar and the United States announced a ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have made a rare political mistake, painting himself into a corner.
The agreement announced in Doha on Wednesday still needs to be approved by Israel’s cabinet, and Netanyahu may not have had the level of support going into the final talks that he needed. That cabinet meeting has yet to be scheduled, the prime minister’s spokesperson, Omer Dostri, tells CNN.
He faces a stark choice: Give in to extremist right-wing demands to return to war after a 42-day ceasefire or accept support from the political opposition and give them veto power over his future in office.
The Israeli cabinet has delayed its vote to approve the ceasefire announced on Wednesday. It claims the reason is that Hamas has inserted some last-minute demands, which CNN understands concerns which Palestinian prisoners will be released from Israeli detention. A Hamas spokesperson said the group “is committed to the ceasefire agreement that was announced by the mediators.”
But in the background, a swirl of activity surrounds the ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose tiny Religious Zionist party is key to Netanyahu’s ability to govern.
The party on Thursday said that as a condition of its support for the ceasefire deal, Netanyahu must commit to restarting the war after 42 days, as soon as the first phase of the truce is over. If he doesn’t, the party said, it will withdraw from the governing coalition. If Netanyahu commits to restart the war after 42 days, and that becomes public knowledge, it could collapse the agreement before it even starts, and bring the ire of incoming US President Donald Trump, who has championed the deal as his doing.
That would make Netanyahu lose his majority the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. But it doesn’t mean his government would collapse, because the opposition leader Yair Lapid, of the Yesh Atid party, has said that he would give the prime minister a lifeline by supporting him in the legislature “for an agreed amount of time.”
That means that Lapid would hold a sword over Netanyahu’s neck, and could collapse the government and bring about an election whenever he choses.
“It’s stunning to me that the prime minister – the magician, the master politician – seems to have miscalculated,” Aaron David Miller, a veteran American negotiator, told CNN on Thursday.
The Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal could provide an opportunity for wider de-escalation in the Middle East, particularly if Iran uses the opportunity to bring the temperature down, a senior fellow at UK-based think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) says.
Iran – which backs Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen – has long engaged in a shadow war with Israel. Last year, Israel and Iran traded direct attacks for the first time.
“The ceasefire opens the possibility for Iran, having already lost significant strategic and hard power in the region, to reconsider its transnational proxy policy and deescalate with Israel,” said Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East security at RUSI.
“It is far from certain that Tehran will seize the opportunity for de-escalation, despite needing it on many fronts.”
“There are several regional moving parts that will have a bearing, such as constraints on the US, Qatar and Egypt to facilitate the survival of the agreement and move beyond the impasse in the next phases,” Ozcelik said Thursday.
Ozcelik added that Houthi militants in Yemen will “now be expected to halt disruptive maritime activities in the Red Sea, something that the US, UK and allies will be watching closely.”
Over the past year, the Houthi group has been attacking shipping in the Red Sea and launching missiles at Israel, saying it will only stop once a Gaza ceasefire is reached.
“All actors will apply a wait-and-see approach during a still volatile conflict environment,” Ozcelik said. “And the risk remains that the deal could prove to be a tentative lull rather than mark the end of the war.”
If the ceasefire deal goes into effect as planned, three female hostages are expected to be released on Sunday, two US officials told CNN. They would be the first of 33 hostages in Gaza, both living and deceased, to be released as part of the first phase of the agreement. Hamas announced the same on Wednesday.
The hostages to be released in the first phase are the so-called “humanitarian” cases: women – including soldiers – older men, and the wounded. Male soldiers or men of fighting age are only expected to be released in a second phase.
This aligns with a document shared by senior Hamas official Bassem Naim Wednesday, which said three female hostages would be released first.
The ceasefire and hostage deal is expected to come into effect on January 19 and include three phases, each of which will last 42 days, according to the document.
In the hours after Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire and hostage deal on Wednesday, many Palestinians took to the streets celebrating what looked like a potential end to the war.
In Israel, some also looked to the agreement with hope that some hostages would be soon returned from Gaza, having been kidnapped since October 2023.
But overnight, shortly after the deal was agreed, local emergency crews in Gaza described a relentless bombardment on the territory, with Israeli strikes killing at least 77 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense. Of those killed, 21 were children and 25 women, it said.
Then on Thursday, Israel said it had delayed a cabinet vote on the agreement, blaming Hamas for reneging on parts of the agreement. Hamas, for its part, said the group was “committed to the truce.”
Despite this, there is no indication that the deal has fallen through. In fact, US Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer told CNN the Biden administration “fully” expects the ceasefire-hostage deal to be implemented Sunday, adding that complications are to be expected “in deals that are complicated.”
However, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionist Party – which is a key part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government – on Thursday threatened to quit the governing coalition if the PM does not return to war after the first phase of the agreement. This move would have the potential to collapse the Israeli government.
A key party in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition is threatening to quit if the prime minister doesn’t return to war in Gaza after the first phase of a ceasefire-hostage agreement that was reached with Hamas on Wednesday. The move could lead to the collapse of the Israeli government.
The agreement announced by mediators Qatar, the United States and Egypt stipulates that Hamas and Israel start negotiating a permanent ceasefire during the 42-day first phase of a truce.
The Israeli cabinet delayed a Thursday vote to ratify the deal, citing last-minute changes by Hamas – which the militant group denied.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism Party on Thursday conditioned that Israel must “return to the war in order to destroy Hamas and the return of all the hostages… immediately after the conclusion of the first phase of the deal” to remain in government, it said in a statement.
The party did not say if it sought a written guarantee from Netanyahu to return to war.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a fellow far-right member of the government, has also threatened to resign and has called on Smotrich to join him. Neither party has enough lawmakers in parliament to collapse the government alone.
Together, both ministers control 14 seats in the legislature, enough to topple the government.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid has offered Netanyahu a “safety net” to protect his government from collapse. That support, however, would almost certainly be tied to the ceasefire deal, and could be withdrawn after all hostages are released, collapsing the government.
The Biden administration “fully” expects the ceasefire-hostage deal in the Middle East to be implemented Sunday – despite a delay in approval of the agreement by Israel’s cabinet.
Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer told CNN Thursday that complications were expected “in deals that are complicated… and when there is literally zero trust between the two parties to the agreement.”
“We fully expect the deal to be implemented as described by the president and by the mediators, Egypt and Qatar yesterday, and on the timeline that was described” Finer told CNN’s Kate Bolduan. “What we’re doing now is working through details of implementation.”
Finer said the United States was in “very close touch with the mediators” and with the Israeli government.
President-elect Donald Trump took full credit for the deal Wednesday, and when asked about it, Finer said he was “certainly not going to respond directly to the president-elect.”
“What I would say is the contours of this deal, the details of this deal, all of the elements, were laid out by President Biden back in May,” he said. “The reality is, to be honest, we’ve not been focused on the political outcomes here and on who gets the credit. What we’ve been focused on is the outcome in the region trying to get this deal done and achieved.”
Since the Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal was announced on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden and Qatar’s prime minister have given addresses. President-elect Donald Trump claimed credit for the “EPIC” agreement and Hamas celebrated with a public statement. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to speak. Why?
The agreement is politically tricky for Netanyahu. For months, he is said to have scuttled attempts at a deal. Now he’s supporting one. (Israeli officials say accusations that he blocked agreements were “misinformed.”)
He is walking a delicate line. Israelis will be happy that at least some of the hostages will be coming home, but the extremist nationalist ministers in Netanyahu’s government are worried that peace will be permanent in Gaza, and the military will no longer be able to attack Hamas.
Biden casts this as the beginning of the end of the war, but Netanyahu has made no such claim.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has said he wants to topple the government. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vehemently opposes the agreement but has so far equivocated on whether he would leave the government.
Netanyahu’s office has been emphasizing how tough he is in ensuring that Israel gets everything it wants out of the talks. Yet the very public way that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is navigating these critical hours seems undoubtedly political.
“Due to (Netanyahu’s) strong insistence… Hamas folded on its last-minute demand to change the deployment of IDF forces in the Philadelphi Corridor,” the PMO said Wednesday.
Hours later, his office said that: “The prime minister instructed the negotiating team to stick to the understandings that were agreed upon, and reject outright the last-minute blackmail attempts on the part of Hamas.”
The Israeli government then said Thursday that Hamas had “reneged on parts of the agreement” and that the Israeli cabinet “will not convene until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”
Hamas responded by saying that it is “committed to the ceasefire agreement, which was announced by the mediators.”
Some protesters objecting to the ceasefire and hostage deal agreed between Israel and Hamas blocked the road into Jerusalem on Thursday.
Dozens of cars were filmed in traffic, while one man on the street held a sign reading “yes to victory, no to surrender.”
Elsewhere, a few protesters stood with mock coffins outside Israel’s Supreme Court in Jerusalem to protest the agreement.
The Israeli government agreed to a deal with Hamas on Wednesday that will pause fighting in Gaza and lead to the phased release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners. On Thursday, it delayed the cabinet vote on the deal, blaming Hamas for reneging on parts of the agreement. Hamas says it remains committed to the truce.
The director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) in Gaza has died after he was hit by an Israeli airstrike earlier this week, according to officials.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza and another rights group confirmed Raafat Salha’s death on Thursday morning.
According to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, 12 of Salha’s family members, including his wife and four children were also killed in the strike, which hit a home where they were sheltering in Deir al-Balah at 11:35 p.m. local time Tuesday. Salha sustained serious head injuries and was transferred to Al-Aqsa hospital where he died of his injuries.
“The Independent Commission for Human Rights holds the occupying power, Israel, fully responsible for this atrocity, which adds to a long series of crimes against civilians in Gaza,” the ICHR said in a statement posted Wednesday.
CNN has contacted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment.
Separately, at least 45 people were killed overnight by Israeli strikes on Gaza just hours after the ceasefire-hostage deal was agreed with Hamas on Wednesday.
Israel on Thursday morning delayed a cabinet vote on the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal, blaming Hamas for reneging on parts of the agreement.
“Hamas reneges on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators and Israel in an effort to extort last minute concessions,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. “The Israeli cabinet will not convene until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, said in a statement on Telegram shortly afterward that Hamas “is committed to the ceasefire agreement that was announced by the mediators.”
The Israeli cabinet was expected to meet Thursday to vote on the highly anticipated ceasefire and hostage release deal that was agreed between Hamas and Israel on Wednesday.
A volley of Israeli attacks on Gaza City killed at least 45 people, just hours after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire accord, according to the Gaza Civil Defense.
At least 20 people were killed in a strike on a residential block near the coastal neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan early Wednesday, the agency said. In a separate attack on a nearby residential block, 15 people were killed and up to 20 injured, according to the Civil Defense.
Video footage from the scene shows rescuers trying to cut people free from blankets under the weight of a building reduced to rubble. Bodies are visible in the clip. In another video, rescuers take injured children for treatment, and minors can be seen receiving care on gurneys after the attack.
In the Al-Rimal neighborhood, the Civil Defense reported five people were killed and 10 injured after a home collapsed under Israeli bombing. And in the central Al-Daraj quarter, five people were killed after a residential block was bombed, according to the agency.
Dozens of casualties were taken to the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital complex in Gaza City, its director Dr. Fadel Naim said, adding that the next 70 hours before the ceasefire comes into effect would be “violent and painful for the people of Gaza. The attacks on Gaza have not stopped.”
“Despite the recent announcement of an agreement to end the war, the aggression continues,” Naim said. “Following the announcement, the occupation carried out intense bombings on residential areas in Gaza City in what seems to be a desperate attempt to cause as much harm as possible.”
CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on Wednesday night’s attacks on Gaza City.
The first phase of the deal reached between Hamas and Israel on Wednesday includes a pause in the war and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli custody.
Several details and the timeline of the full deal remain unclear. But here’s what we know so far about the hostages held in Gaza, and who may be released.
Israel’s 15-month war in Gaza, launched in response to Hamas’ October 7 attack, has decimated large swathes of the enclave and destroyed key health care infrastructure while placing an enormous strain on hospitals that remain functional.
Overnight, the death toll in the strip climbed higher, even as mediators announced a ceasefire and hostage deal set to take effect Sunday.
At least 12 people were killed and 20 others injured in an Israeli strike on a residential area in northern Gaza Wednesday, according to the Gaza Civil Defense.
More than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Nearly 18,000 of those killed were children, the ministry says.
But the true number is likely much higher, according to a recent study.
Research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) published in The Lancet journal, said there were an estimated 64,260 “traumatic injury deaths” in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza put the figure at 37,877 at the time.
As of October 2024, the number of Gazans killed by violence was thought to exceed 70,000, the study said, based on the estimated underreporting rate.
The total death toll attributable to Israel’s military campaign is likely to be higher still, it said, as its analysis does not account for deaths caused by disruption to health care, insufficient food, clean water and sanitation, and disease.
World leaders backed the ceasefire and hostage deal agreed by Israel and Hamas as people celebrated in cities around the world, including Berlin, Tunis, Tunisia and Jordan’s capital Amman.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the agreement was “a critical first step” and called on all parties to uphold commitments and fully enforce the deal, adding that the UN was ready to support its implementation.
European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen said she “warmly welcomed” the agreement, while the EU high representative for foreign affairs Kaja Kallas, said, “this is a major, positive breakthrough toward ending the violence.”
Here’s a roundup of some of the international reaction:
International aid agencies are calling for an urgent and major scaling up of humanitarian access to Gaza, following Israel and Hamas’s agreement to a ceasefire-hostage deal.
Many welcomed the deal and vowed to scale up their work in the Palestinian enclave, where 15 months of constant Israeli bombardment and restrictions on aid have caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
Here’s what some of the aid groups are saying:
The Israeli cabinet is expected to vote Thursday on whether to ratify a highly anticipated ceasefire and hostage release deal agreed between Hamas and Israel.
The agreement, expected go into effect Sunday, would deliver the first reprieve from war for the people of Gaza in more than a year, and only the second since the Israeli bombardment began 15 months ago.
Families of hostages expressed joy and relief following the announcement of the deal, which would initially see 33 hostages held in Gaza released in exchange for hundreds of prisoners held by Israel.
Here’s what to know:
European leaders have expressed hope that the first phase of the deal reached between Hamas and Israel on Wednesday could lead to prolonged peace.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the deal “must now be implemented to the letter,” adding: “This ceasefire opens the door to a permanent end to the war and to the improvement of the poor humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed the “long-overdue news” of the deal, and called for “a huge surge in humanitarian aid” to the battered enclave.
“After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, this is the long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for,” Starmer said in a statement, adding that the international community’s attention should now turn to securing a “permanently better future for the Israeli and Palestinian people, grounded in a two-state solution.”
Starmer hailed the release of hostages who are expected to return home as part of Wednesday’s deal, who were “ripped from their homes on that day and held captive in unimaginable conditions ever since,” while paying tribute to those who will not make it home, “including the British people who were murdered by Hamas.”
As news of the ceasefire deal emerged, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an X post: “The agreement must be respected. The hostages, freed. The Gazans, rescued. A political solution must be found.”
Qatar’s prime minister announced that Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire on Wednesday, leading to a pause in fighting and a phased release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Here are some photos of reactions in the region.
The first phase of the deal reached between Hamas and Israel on Wednesday includes a pause in the war and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli custody.
But several details and the timeline of the full deal remain unclear and will be key to its success moving forward.
The deal is set up to progress in three distinct phases:
Phase one is expected to start Sunday and last for six weeks. This phase will feature a ceasefire, a withdrawal of Israeli troops, a swap of hostages and prisoners, and an influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza. US hostages held in Gaza will be released in that first phase, US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.
The second and third phases are less developed, and the details will be decided during the first phase, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said in a briefing Wednesday.
“We will continue to do everything we can, everything possible together with our partners, to ensure that this deal is implemented as it’s agreed,” he said. “And this deal will bring us peace, hopefully, at the end of it. I believe that it all depends on the parties of the agreement acting in good faith in that agreement in order to ensure that no collapse happens to that deal.”
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What’s in the Hamas-Israel ceasefire and hostage release deal
The father of Israeli hostage Nimrod Cohen says he sees a long fight ahead before his son is released, despite the announcement of a ceasefire-for-hostages deal.
Yehuda Cohen says he doesn’t anticipate his 20-year-old son, a soldier with the Israel Defense Forces, will be among those returned in the first phase of the deal.
The first phase is expected to see the release of 33 hostages, including civilians and female soldiers, children, the elderly and the sick in exchange for an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Wednesday.
“We’re going to start counting days in two tracks. One track is the process of hostages being released. The second track is to count 16 days from the beginning” of the deal, when the second phase is expected to be negotiated, Cohen said.
The Cohen family expects a long period of “fighting” and keeping “the pressure” on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to keep the deal on track, he added.
“We’re talking about reality. Things won’t happen because they happen. Things happen because people make sure they are happening,” he said. “I’m not hoping. I’m fighting for it. If I just sit down and hope or pray, it won’t happen.”
When Qatar’s prime minister emerged Wednesday to declare — at long last — that a ceasefire-for-hostage deal had been struck in Gaza, representatives for two American administrations were on hand in Doha to bask in the victory.
The cooperation between the two was “almost unprecedented,” a senior Biden administration official said after the deal was clinched, made possible by a rare intersection of interests between bitter rivals who both saw an opening following Trump’s victory.
Brett McGurk, the longtime Middle East negotiator for President Joe Biden, had been planted in the Qatari capital for weeks in the hopes of a final agreement. He was joined in recent days by President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, for the final push.
At points, McGurk and Witkoff divvied up meetings across the Middle East to push the deal across the line, including critical talks between Witkoff and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week that McGurk joined by phone. If McGurk was focused primarily on the parameters of the deal, Witkoff was on hand to emphasize Trump’s desire to see a deal finished by Inauguration Day.
After the agreement was announced, both the incoming and outgoing president took full credit, a sign the poisonous relationship between them endures.
Ultimately, however, the deal enables both Biden and Trump to claim victory. It notches a final bit of positive news for a president who is poised to leave office with the lowest approval rating of his term. And it bolsters the bonafides of a president-elect who vowed “all hell would break out” in Gaza if the hostages were not released before his second inauguration.
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How the Biden and Trump teams worked together to get the Gaza ceasefire and hostages deal done
An Israeli strike that hit a residential area in northern Gaza killed at least 12 people and injured 20 others on Wednesday, according to the Gaza Civil Defense.
The statement came shortly after the announcement of the ceasefire-for-hostages deal, which is expected to come into effect on January 19.
The strike hit “a residential block consisting of multiple houses in the vicinity of Sheikh Radwan,” a neighborhood of Gaza City, the civil defense said.
CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment.
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