Cease-fire paves way for hostage release

Clean clothes and children’s toys await freed captives in Israel

TEL AVIV — Israel has made preparations to receive the initial group of hostages set to be released from Gaza as part of the hostage deal announced yesterday.

Seven weeks after they were captured from Israel on Oct. 7, the hostages will leave Gaza into Egypt, before being transferred to Hatzerim Airbase in southern Israel. The Israel Defense Force released video and photographs showing its pop-up welcome center at the airbase, including medical checks and psychological support, clean clothes, phones to contact family members and toys for children.

They will then go by helicopter or bus to Israeli hospitals where they will be reunited with family members. Those who need immediate medical treatment will go straight to the hospital, the IDF said.Photos released by the IDF of their preparations to receive the hostages appear to show headphones laid out inside military helicopter (above). At a makeshift reception area, rugs and pillows are arranged on the floor with cuddly toys for children, as well as water bottles and magazines.

Israel has begun the transfer of Palestinian prisoners

JERUSALEM —  The first group of Palestinian security prisoners are leaving Damon and Megiddo prisons in northern Israel, and are now in the process of being transferred to Ofer military jail in the West Bank, Israel Prisoner Service told NBC News.

As part of the deal agreed with Hamas, Israel is set to release 39 prisoners today including 24 women and 15 teenage boys, the Palestinian commissioner for prisoners confirmed to NBC News.

They are scheduled to be exchanged for 13 hostages who were captured in Israel on Oct. 7 and had been held in Gaza, Qadura Fares said.

The Palestinian inmates are all from the occupied West Bank or Jerusalem. The International Committee of the Red Cross will handle the handover at Ofer military jail around 4 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET), Fares told Reuters.

Officials have said that in total, they expect 50 captives to be freed from Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians held in Israeli detention.

AP: Two Gazans shot by Israeli forces

The Associated Press is reporting that Israeli troops have fatally shot two Palestinians and wounded 11 others who were headed back toward northern Gaza, the center of Israel’s military campaign which it had warned them to avoid.

An Associated Press journalist said they saw the two bodies and the wounded as they arrived at a hospital in Deir al-Balah, a town in the southern half of Gaza. The injured had been shot in the legs.

Israel has dropped leaflets in Gaza warning Palestinians that the truce is only temporary and not to move back up north. However the AP says it has seen hundreds of Palestinians trying to head back up there during the pause in fighting.

‘I hope this is real’: Hostage deal raises hopes in rural Thai village

DONPILA, Thailand — All eyes will be on Israel and Gaza on Friday, but when the Hamas militant group releases the first of 50 hostages in a cease-fire deal, there will also be renewed hope in this rural village in northeastern Thailand.

Anucha Angkaew’s family hopes it means he will soon be released as well, some seven weeks after he is believed to have been abducted from the kibbutz where he was working in southern Israel.

About two dozen of the estimated 240 hostages being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip are from Thailand, one of Israel’s biggest sources of migrant labor. Thailand also has among the highest death tolls in the conflict of any foreign country, with 39 of its citizens killed.

“I hope this is real news and Art is coming back to our family soon,” Anucha’s mother, Watsana Yojampa, said Wednesday after hearing about the Israel-Hamas agreement, referring to him by his nickname. 

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IDF says it destroyed tunnel beneath Al-Shifa Hospital, now in defensive positions for pause

The Israel Defense Forces says it has dug into defense positions in Gaza for the temporary cessation of fighting agreed with Hamas.

Ahead of the pause, the IDF posted on X, its soldiers destroyed tunnels used by Hamas “in the area of” the Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s main medical center, which Israel says has been used as a headquarters by the militant group.

“In addition, over the last day, our troops struck various terrorist targets from the land, air and sea,” it said.

Earlier this week, Israel released footage of what it said was a tunnel underneath Al-Shifa Hospital being used by Hamas, after condemnation of Israeli attacks that have killed doctors, patients and civilians who had sought shelter there. Hamas and doctors deny the hospital is used by the militant group.

‘The war isn’t over yet:’ IDF warns Gazans not to return north

The Israeli military has dropped leaflets over Gaza and released a video this morning warning Palestinians that “the war isn’t over yet” and not to return to their homes in the north of the strip despite the cease-fire.

“The humanitarian pause is temporary and the northern area is a dangerous war zone and movement isn’t allowed,” the leaflets said in Arabic. “Yours and your family’s fate is in your hands. You have been warned.”

Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s spokesman for Arab media, posted a video to X giving the same message as the leaflets, which ended: “Yours and your family’s fate is in your hands. You have been warned.”

The military told Palestinians that “for your safety, you need to stay in the humanitarian area in the south of the Gaza Strip.” However, Israel has been criticized by Palestinians and international human rights organizations because, despite telling people to flee to the south, it has also been bombing there too.

Fuel trucks enter Gaza as part of deal to pause fighting

At least seven tankers carrying fuel and cooking gas and around 200 trucks of humanitarian aid have entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt as part of the deal agreed by Israel and Hamas, the Israeli military and the Red Crescent said.

Israel stopped fuel entering Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, saying it could be used to launch missiles and operate tunnel ventilation. Israel has been under increasing pressure, including from the United States, to allow more fuel and aid into the enclave as it has lurched further into a humanitarian crisis.

On Friday morning, the Israel Defense Forces said eight trucks entered Gaza from Egypt, destined for United Nations humanitarian aid organizations “operating essential humanitarian infrastructure” in the south of the strip where many Gazans have fled the intense fighting in the north.

Raed Abdel Nasser, secretary general of the Red Crescent in Egypt’s North Sinai, put the number of fuel trucks at seven. He told NBC News that 200 aid trucks had also crossed, along with a number of Gazans who had been stranded on the Egyptian side. Foreigners and dual nationals, including 17 injured people and five cancer patients, went the other way, he said.

Israeli tanks return from Gaza

Max Butterworth

A convoy of Israeli military tanks and armored personnel carriers leave Gaza and cross back into southern Israel this morning, during the temporary cease-fire which began today.

‘Every deal opens door to next deal’: Hostage families back truce

Gil Dickmann, whose cousin was taken by Hamas on October 7, said that all Israelis want to see all the hostages back home as soon as possible.

“And I don’t think that there’s a price that should not be paid for this,” he said.

Thailand welcomes truce amid hopes for Thai hostages

Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it welcomed the Israel-Hamas truce and hopes that Thai nationals being held hostage will also soon be released.

“Thailand fervently hopes that this momentum can be maintained so that the remaining hostages, which include Thai nationals, are released at the earliest opportunity,” the ministry said in a statement today.

About two dozen of the estimated 240 hostages being held by Hamas are from Thailand, one of Israel’s biggest sources of migrant labor. Thailand also has among the highest death tolls in the conflict of any foreign country, with 39 of its citizens killed.

Hostage deal exposes tensions between Israel’s far-right and hostage families

In the push and pull between Israel’s two stated war goals — destroy Hamas and free the hostages held in Gaza — this week the needle swung toward the latter, temporarily at least, with an agreement to pause the fighting and swap prisoners.

It’s been welcomed across much of Israel and internationally, a chance not only to secure the release of some women and children snatched from Israel on Oct. 7, but also to pause the fighting in the Gaza Strip that has so far killed more than 14,000 people.

But even in Israel, a country united in grief and defiance by Hamas’ terror attacks, the deal exposed divisions in how to balance the two goals. Hard-right members of the Israeli government are opposed to any cessation in fighting, while the victims’ families who welcomed the deal are calling for a longer pause to free more people.

It is a tension that’s pulling national opinion to extremes. 

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Palestinians return to their homes in southern Gaza as cease-fire begins

Max Butterworth

Children look out from the window of a car as Palestinians who had taken refuge in temporary shelters return to their homes in Khan Younis, southern Gaza this morning.A four-day truce began today, with hostages set to be released in exchange for prisoners in the first major reprieve in seven weeks of war that have claimed thousands of lives.

Truce seems to hold after early rocket sirens in southern Israel

Max Burman

So far the pause in fighting seems to have been largely observed.

Israeli forces were striking Gaza heavily until right up to the deadline, and sirens warning of incoming rocket fire sounded in southern Israeli communities about 15 minutes after the truce was due to begin, but no major fighting appears to be taking place now two hours in.

What it took to get this point

It took weeks of secret negotiations involving U.S., Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials, the heads of the CIA and the Mossad, and the personal intervention of President Joe Biden to convince a reluctant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a four-day cease-fire that is expected to free 50 hostages from Hamas.

The negotiations, while ultimately successful, revealed the vast challenges that remain in freeing all of the roughly 240 captives seized during the group’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

Throughout the talks, Hamas officials maintained that they had taken captive only about 70 Israeli soldiers and 50 women and children, according to a diplomat in the region with knowledge of the negotiations.

Hamas officials said the whereabouts of as many as 100 other captives are unknown but they are pursuing leads. The group claimed that “some Israelis were kidnapped by individual Palestinian gangs or smugglers,” according to the diplomat.

The final agreement — the outlines of which had been on the table for weeks — wouldn’t have been accepted by Netanyahu without enormous pressure from Biden, according to a senior Israeli government official.

“This deal was a Biden deal, not a Netanyahu deal,” the official said.

Read the full story here.

Displaced Gazan family says pause needs to become a full end to fighting

Alaa and Omar Al Salawat are staying at a camp for displaced Gazans in Khan Younis. Both expressed a desire to see a lasting peace in the war between Israel and Hamas.

“We just want a life without war,” Alaa said. “We’ve had enough of war.”

Pause in fighting set to begin ahead of hostage release

Max Burman

The first pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas is set to begin now, a diplomatic breakthrough that is set to see the release of 13 hostages from Gaza later this morning in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Much still remains to be seen, including whether both sides will adhere to the deal that was painstakingly negotiated for weeks and brokered by the U.S., Qatar and Egypt.

For Gazans, a four-day pause could provide a crucial respite from Israeli bombardment and allow much-needed aid to enter to the battered Palestinian enclave. For the families of Israeli hostages, the next few days could see emotional reunions and the hope that more may follow.

Catch up with NBC News’ latest coverage of the war