A cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas is about to begin.

Open the editor’s digest for free

FT editor Rula Khalaf picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The deal between Israel and Hamas, which was due to begin Sunday morning, will end a brutal 15-month war in Gaza and pave the way for the release of prisoners held by the still-fragile Palestinian militant group.

The six-week truce – after months of attempts to reach an initial agreement on the first phase of a multi-level deal brokered by US-led mediators last week – will take effect at 08.30 local time (06.30 GMT).

If the truce holds, Hamas will free three of the 98 hostages it has held so far in Gaza on Sunday. In exchange, Israel will release 90 Palestinian prisoners.

But to signal the weakness of the arrangement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said an hour before the deal was to go into effect, it would not begin unless Hamas gave Israel the names of the hostages to be released on Sunday. .

In a statement minutes later, Hamas said it was committed to the ceasefire and that the delay in delivering the names was due to “technical reasons on the ground”.

The multi-level deal offers hope to stop and end the bloodiest war in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has ravaged Gaza, consumed Israeli society and brought the Middle East to its brink. A total war.

The fighting was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, in which militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took another 250 hostage, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Israel has responded with a heavy-handed attack on Gaza that has killed more than 46,000 people, Palestinian officials said, as well as displaced 2.3mn people from most of the coastal areas and fueled a humanitarian carnage.

After more than half a year of failed attempts at a cease-fire, mediators announced last week that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a tripartite deal, which was brokered by US President Joe Biden in May last year.

The first phase involves a six-week truce, during which Hamas will release a total of 33 hostages — including children, women, the sick and the elderly — and about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.

In the first phase of the deal, displaced Palestinians will be allowed to return to their homes, including northern Gaza. In addition, Israeli troops will be partially withdrawn from Gaza and massive humanitarian aid will flow into the territory.

If the deal goes ahead as planned, on the 16th of the first phase, Israel and Hamas will begin negotiating the details of the second phase of the deal, in which the remaining hostages will be released in exchange for hundreds of additional Palestinian prisoners. The withdrawal of the Israeli army from Gaza and the permanent end of the war.

The final phase involves the return of the bodies of the remaining hostages held by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations, and the start of the reconstruction of Gaza.

But questions remain over whether the deal will be fully implemented, with Netanyahu under intense pressure from right-wing coalition members to continue the war when the first phase of the deal expires.

On Saturday evening, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Givir of the Jewish Power Party said he would quit the government in protest of the deal, reducing Netanyahu’s majority in Israel’s 120-seat parliament to two seats.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist ally of Ben Gavir, threatened to expel his religious Zionist party from government if the war did not continue beyond the first phase. If he does so, Netanyahu will lose his parliamentary majority.