Israel’s security cabinet on Friday recommended approving the ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas, leaving one more step until it could be implemented. The deal still needs to be approved by the full Israeli cabinet, then it would be expected to start being implemented on Sunday.
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza continued overnight Friday, with the Hamas-run civil defense agency saying 113 Palestinians have been killed since a ceasefire and hostage deal was announced Wednesday evening.
Huda Matrabie, a Palestinian woman in northern Gaza, told CBS News partner network BBC News that the prospect of the agreement had given her hope, but “with this hope comes real fear” that the deal could fall apart.
“The fear is not just of the immediate danger, but of the emotional toll: constant uncertainty and the ever-present feeling that our lives are not truly our own,” she said.
Families of the hostages gathered in Tel Aviv on Friday to call for the deal to be finalized.
“This deal comes too late for my son Guy, whose life will not be saved. But he can be brought back home for burial here,” Michel Illouz, whose 26-year-old son was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023 and is believed to have died in Gaza, told a gathered crowd. “Our work is not done. We will not rest until every hostage is home, the living and the dead. They all need to return to us, to their family.”
Israel’s security cabinet was meeting Friday to discuss the deal with the Israeli team that was sent to the negotiations in Qatar and was scheduled to vote on it later in the day.
The wider group of Israel’s cabinet ministers was initially scheduled to hold its separate vote on the deal on Saturday, but an Israeli official told CBS News that it had been brought forward to Friday afternoon.
Preparations were underway Friday to welcome the hostages who would be released under the deal at various Israeli hospitals.
At the Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv, a private ward was being made more comfortable, and a menu of special food was being prepared. The hospital was setting up barriers for privacy. The plan was for the hostages to arrive by helicopter.
At Sheba Hospital, plans were being made for a staff of specialists to support the hostages arriving there, and fresh new clothes and toiletries were being arranged for them.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Friday that, subject to security cabinet and government approval, implementation of the plan for the release of the hostages in Gaza and the exchange of Palestinian prisoners in Israel could begin on Sunday.
The first phase of that plan would last 42 days and see a halt to the fighting and the exchange of 33 hostages in Gaza for up to 1000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. It would also see a drawdown of Israeli troops in Gaza and a surge in humanitarian aid.
