(Bloomberg) -- The first truce since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted last month went into effect on Friday morning.
The deal came after weeks of complex and delicate talks brokered by Qatar, the US and Egypt. The halt in fighting is intended to last for four days. Hamas, an Iran-backed militant group, is meant to return 50 of the almost 240 hostages it captured from Israel, while the Israelis will release 150 jailed Palestinians and allow more aid into Gaza.
All 200 are expected to be women and people under the age of 19. Qatar has said Hamas will free the first group of 13 hostages around 4 p.m. local time. Israeli media has said 39 Palestinians will be let out of prison on Friday.
As the cease-fire came into effect, streets in the southern Gaza Strip — where Israel has urged civilians to evacuate to as its troops concentrate on the north — were filled with people emerging from shelters, some carrying belongings, footage on Al Jazeera showed. In the city of Khan Younis, cars crowded the streets and blared their horns.
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Israeli strikes from air, land and sea intensified ahead of the cease-fire, the United Nations said. There were “ground battles with Palestinian armed groups in the north and many casualties have been reported,” it said.
Shortly before the pause in hostilities, the Israeli army warned people in Gaza to stay in southern areas. In recent weeks hundreds of thousands have fled their homes in the north, which Israel says is Hamas's “center of gravity.”
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Meanwhile, trucks of humanitarian aid started entering southern Gaza from Egypt, a statement from the Hamas-run border crossing authority said. It is the same crossing where hostages are expected to cross after Hamas releases them.
The start of the truce was delayed by a day as the sides held last-minute negotiations via Qatar following an initial agreement in the early hours of Wednesday.
“It's going to be a very fragile few days,” Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said to Bloomberg Television on Friday. “We're going to have to see how things develop, if both sides adhere to the agreement.”
The pause marks the first major lull in fighting since the conflict began on Oct. 7. That day, Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union, attacked southern Israeli communities and army bases from Gaza, killing 1,200 people as well as taking the hostages.
Israel responded with a massive bombardment of the Gaza Strip, a densely-packed Mediterranean enclave with around 2.3 million inhabitants. It also launched a ground offensive on the northern part in late October. Almost 15,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began, according to its Hamas-run health ministry.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that after the truce ends on Tuesday, Israel will carry on the war until Hamas is destroyed.
“The war is not over yet,” an Israeli military spokesman said on Friday morning. “The humanitarian pause is temporary.”
US President Joe Biden has hailed the deal as a step toward eventually seeing all the hostages freed and getting more food and medicine into Gaza to ease what the United Nations says is a humanitarian disaster.
Three American citizens are thought to be among the 50 hostages being released in the first stage of the deal.
A second stage could see the pause in fighting extended another day for every 10 additional hostages released.
Only four hostages, including two US citizens, have been released so far, while Israeli troops freed another.
“There's really been a shift in the last couple of weeks” in Israel, said Zonszein. “The hostages were, kind of, an afterthought in the very beginning. You've suddenly seen the political leadership talking about hostage releases as being just as significant” as destroying Hamas, she said.
Of the 40 children abducted, most are female and they include a 10-month-old infant, a three-year-old whose parents were killed on Oct. 7 and some with life-threatening food allergies and autism, said Hagai Levine of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which was set up to represent the families.
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Ahead of the pause, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid Bin Salman called for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. After a call with UK Secretary of Defense Grant Shapps, he said: “I stressed the need to end military operations, protect civilians and allow unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid.”
Iran welcomed the truce and warned the war should not be restarted.
“If the Israeli regime continues the war after this stage of the truce, the conditions in the region will become more tense and the reactions will spread,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said.
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Iran also backs Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon and has exchanged regular cross-border fire with Israel since the conflict started. But so far Hezbollah has refrained from a full-on assault against Israel.
Biden spoke to Netanyahu on Thursday and emphasized “the importance of maintaining calm along the Lebanese border as well as in the West Bank” during the cease-fire in Gaza. The prime minister made no concrete commitments, according to Israel's Channel 13.
--With assistance from Antony Sguazzin, Dana Khraiche, Sam Dagher, Fadwa Hodali and Fares Akram.
(Updates with comments on hostages and fragility of the truce.)
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