Ceasefire begins almost three hours late after Hamas hands over hostage names

“We want to see hostages released. We want to see proper aid be able to get to the people of Gaza. And we want Israelis and Palestinians to be able to live in peace and security.”

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Sharren Haskel, said she had met Australia’s Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in Jerusalem last week and had expressed her “disappointment with the shift in the Australian government’s attitude towards Israel”.

Haskel said she had also conveyed her “deep concern regarding the shocking rise in antisemitism in Australia and the clearly ineffectual response from the Australian government and state governments”.

“There is no doubt this has been caused in part by the Australian government’s ongoing campaign against Israel,” she said, echoing a fiery December social media post by Netanyahu.

The Hamas-run civil defence agency said eight people had been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza since the ceasefire was supposed to take effect; the Israeli military said on Sunday it had struck “terror targets” in northern and central Gaza.

“According to the prime minister’s directives, the ceasefire will not come into effect until Hamas fulfils its commitments,” Hagari said in a televised statement.

Far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir announced he was quitting Netanyahu’s conservative coalition in protest over the ceasefire agreement, ending his controversial tenure as the country’s minister for national security and weakening Netanyahu’s hold on power.

Fellow far-right cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich, Netanyahu’s finance minister, has also opposed the ceasefire deal but has not said he would quit the government over the issue.

Meanwhile, Israel announced that it had recovered the body of Oron Shaul, a soldier who was killed in the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, in a special operation. The bodies of Shaul and another soldier, Hadar Goldin, remained in Gaza after the 2014 war and had not been returned despite a public campaign by their families.

Netanyahu said he had instructed the military that the ceasefire “will not begin until Israel has in its possession the list of hostages to be freed, which Hamas committed to provide”. He had issued a similar warning the night before.

Israeli forces had already started withdrawing from areas in Gaza’s Rafah to the Philadelphi corridor along the border between Egypt and Gaza, pro-Hamas media reported early on Sunday.

Israel’s military warned Gaza residents not to approach its troops or move around the Palestinian territory ahead of the ceasefire deadline, adding when movement was allowed, “a statement and instructions will be issued on safe transit methods”.

The ceasefire agreement followed months of on-off negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, and came just ahead of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump.

The agreement’s first stage is to last six weeks, during which 33 of the remaining 98 hostages – women, children, men over 50, the ill and wounded – are to be released in return for almost 2000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

The Palestinians include 737 male, female and teenage prisoners, some of whom are members of militant groups convicted of attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, as well as hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza in detention since the start of the war.

Three female hostages were to be released on Monday morning AEDT through the Red Cross, in return for 30 prisoners each.

After the initial hostage release, lead US negotiator Brett McGurk said, the accord called for four more female hostages to be freed after seven days, followed by the release of three further hostages every seven days thereafter.

Among the hostages expected to be released in coming weeks is Kfir Babas, the youngest of those taken during Hamas’ attack on southern Israel in October 2023. The toddler’s family marked his second birthday on Saturday. Kfir has become a symbol across Israel for the helplessness over the hostages’ plight.

During the first phase, the Israeli army is to pull back from some of its positions in Gaza, and Palestinians displaced from areas in northern Gaza will be allowed to return.

In a national address 12 hours before the ceasefire was due to begin, Netanyahu said his country was treating the truce as temporary and retained the right to continue fighting if necessary. He claimed he had the support of Trump, who told NBC News that he told Netanyahu to “keep doing what you have to do”.

Netanyahu also asserted that he negotiated the best deal possible, even as Israel’s far-right Public Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said he and most of his party would resign from the government in opposition to it.

US President Joe Biden’s team worked closely with Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to push the deal over the line.

As his inauguration approached, Trump had repeated his demand that a deal be done swiftly, warning repeatedly that there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released.

But what will come next in Gaza remains unclear in the absence of a comprehensive agreement on the postwar future of the enclave, which will require billions of dollars and years of work to rebuild.

Israel has vowed it will not allow Hamas to return to power and has cleared large stretches of ground inside Gaza, in a step widely seen as a move towards creating a buffer zone that will allow its troops to act freely against threats in the enclave.

In Israel, the return of the hostages may ease some of the public anger against Netanyahu and his right-wing government over the October 7, 2023, security failure that led to the deadliest single day in the country’s history.

On the diplomatic front, Israel has faced outrage and isolation over the death and devastation in Gaza.

Netanyahu faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on war crimes allegations and separate accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Israel has reacted with fury to both cases, rejecting the charges as politically motivated and accusing South Africa, which brought the original case, as well as the countries that have joined it, of antisemitism.

The war was triggered by Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel in which 1200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. More than 400 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat in Gaza since.

Israel’s 15-month campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry figures, which do not distinguish between fighters and civilians, and left the narrow coastal enclave a wasteland of rubble.

Health officials say most of the dead are civilians. Israel says more than a third are fighters.

with Reuters, AP