The Israel-Hamas hostage deal explained

Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal land. Just a reminder, before we get into the episode, we still have our listener survey in our show notes and on the website until Monday, and we’d love to hear from you about what you do and don’t like about the show. It’s anonymous and it doesn’t take long, so you can even fill it out while you’re on the go. We’d love to hear from you. Now for ABC News Daily.

After almost 50 days of war, Israel and Hamas secured a deal to pause the fighting and release hostages and prisoners. So, what went on behind the scenes to reach this agreement, and could it be a turning point in the war? Today, an expert on ceasefires, Dr. Marika Sosnowski from Melbourne University, on the complexities of the negotiations and what to expect next. Marika, I want to discuss this deal for a cease fire and the release of hostages. What do we know so far?

Dr Marika Sosnowski: The main contours are this prisoner and hostage swap. So 50 women and children that Hamas are holding in exchange for 150 women and children – Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

News clip: Hamas is believed to be holding more than 200 hostages taken when its fighters surged into Israel on October the 7th, killing 1200 people. The agreement will include the exchange of 150 Palestinian prisoners.

Dr Marika Sosnowski: So that’s the kind of quid pro quo in terms of the prisoner exchange. And then there will be a four day ceasefire as part of that, that will enable that swap to actually happen logistically.

News clip: We know that about 10 to 12 hostages will be released per day if the deal holds. And that’s far from certain. And we think the deal could be extended. Israel says it could be extended if more hostages are released and it could go for as long as ten days…

Dr Marika Sosnowski: It’s not just the prisoner swap that’s part of the deal. There’s other terms of that agreement that are starting to trickle out.

Sam Hawley: I can imagine it would have been incredibly complicated to broker. And my, what a relief for the hostages who were going to be released and their families.

Israeli hostage relative: It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around a situation like this. Every person that comes home is a, is a huge thing.

Israeli hostage relative: We are agree to everything. Just- we need all the people back. Children, mothers, elders, soldiers. Everybody. Everybody.

Israeli hostage relative: But until they will cross the border inside Israel and we see them and we will know from our contact from the government that this is them or not them. I’m not losing hope because anything can happen and we learned it in the hardest way.

Sam Hawley: It’s an incredibly anxious wait, of course, for the families. Yifat Zailer, her cousin, her cousin’s husband and their two children were taken by the terrorists on October 7th.

Yifat Zailer, relative of Israeli hostage: Everyone is very excited around us, but we are very, very concerned and it’s going to be probably in the last minute. And when we see her and when they release her, I heard probably through Egypt, then we can celebrate. But until then we are worried sick still and we don’t know if they’re alive. And hopefully, hopefully they’ll be back to us by the end of this week.

Sam Hawley: And Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, says as part of the deal, the Red cross will be able to visit the remaining hostages in Gaza. But I think his main point during an address after the deal was brokered was that this does not mean that the war has ended by any means.

Dr Marika Sosnowski: That has unfortunately been part of it. Yeah. He’s been very clear that, you know, he’s rejected sort of this terminology of a ceasefire. Certainly even this one was called, I think, a humanitarian pause. And he said very explicitly that the campaign, the IDF’s campaign will continue after this sort of four days, pending Hamas being able to find other hostages to release.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel: Outside, there is a lot of nonsense talk, as if after we have a ceasefire for the release of the hostages, we will stop the war. So I would like to clarify that we are at war, and we will continue to fight until we reach our goals.

Sam Hawley: Well, let’s look now at how this deal was negotiated a bit more. You mentioned Qatar played a key mediating role, and the white House and US President Joe Biden are also meant to have been quite involved in these negotiations. Just explain to me how this may have all played out.

Dr Marika Sosnowski: I think it’s hard to know, because these negotiations are often couched in a lot of secrecy. But the US obviously played quite a big role, I think, in terms of putting pressure on Israel to accept some sort of deal. I think also there was pressure coming on Israel from the families of the hostages domestically. They were pushing for the release of the hostages domestically. And that pressure was, I think, being felt by Netanyahu and other members of the government in terms of why they came to this, this ceasefire deal now. And I also think international pressure on both parties, but particularly Israel, to stop the bombing for a period of time that would have weighed into kind of decision making around this deal happening when it did as well.

Sam Hawley: Hmm. All right. And just explain Qatar’s role. How important is it that there’s a sort of middle nation, a mediator in all of this?

Dr Marika Sosnowski: There’s definitely different opinions as to how useful, notionally unbiased mediator would be in terms of a negotiation. I think in this case, it’s probably quite important because technically Israel won’t speak directly to Hamas. You know, that it considers a terrorist organisation. So in kind of that plausible deniability that they can have where they can speak to Qatar and Qatar can kind of ferry messages between the two parties, they can kind of maintain that they’re not speaking directly to Hamas and that they’re they’re negotiating effectively with Qatar. So that’s that’s an interesting role for Qatar in this in this instance. And obviously Qatar has good relations with Hamas as well. So there was kind of a trust building exercise, I think, in the weeks leading up to this actual deal, where Hamas could prove that it could provide and release the hostages as part of the deal that they’ve now negotiated.

Sam Hawley: Well, Marika, the four day cease fire comes at a time when civilians in Gaza are facing, of course, dire conditions. The death toll continues to grow. More than 11,000 people have been killed, according to the Gaza health Ministry, which is run by Hamas. Israel, of course, says Hamas has effectively been using civilians as human shields. But this cease fire, it provides a moment for humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, right, and to set up potentially safe zones for civilians.

Dr Marika Sosnowski: Correct. Yeah, that’s another part of the deal, definitely. Is this sort of how much aid can come in and certainly where it can come from. So at the moment, the Rafah crossing, which is the crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, is the one being used. And I understand that the UN is also trying to push for another crossing to be opened, because obviously, as you mentioned, the humanitarian needs in Gaza at the moment are just extraordinary. You know, I don’t think I’ve heard nightmare as a term used to describe a situation quite as often as I have in the last sort of seven weeks to describe what’s happening in Gaza. The infrastructure of the strip is basically completely been wiped out. So there’s no clean water, there’s no electricity, there’s no sanitation and sewerage systems. The cease fire will provide the ability for aid organisations, predominantly the UN, to go in and bring those immediate humanitarian needs also hopefully fuel, which can then be used to start to power some of the hospitals and stuff like that.

Sam Hawley: Yeah. Although four days is not a lot to play with. Marika, just tell me more about how this ceasefire might work. Do the Israeli soldiers on the ground in Gaza, for instance, pull out over this time? And what do the Hamas fighters do over this, over this four day pause in fighting?

Dr Marika Sosnowski: So my understanding is they’re meant to just hold their positions. They won’t they won’t pull out the IDF. They’ll hold where they are. I think Israel practically will use the pause in fighting to gather more intelligence. So they’ll be looking for where the hostages are coming from and how they’re being taken to the border of the Gaza Strip, for example. And, you know, the worry from Israel’s point of view is that Hamas will use the pause in fighting to regroup some of their fighters to prepare for the fighting that might go on after the ceasefire. You know, all sides to a conflict will use a pause in fighting to the ends that best suit them. Basically, each party is trying to capitalise on their position. So they use a ceasefire, you know, in whatever way it best suits them.

Sam Hawley: All right, well, I want to discuss with you now what could be the unintended consequences of this ceasefire, including, I suppose, the risk that it could fall over altogether.

Dr Marika Sosnowski: Look, that’s always a risk with ceasefires. What I’m particularly concerned about are these kind of safe zones or humanitarian corridors that have been established under the terms of ceasefire. So even in the previous ceasefires, we’ve seen that civilians have been requested to move south to the south of the Gaza Strip. Effectively, what this means is that the ceasefire is causing a mass displacement of civilians. The issue for me, I’ve been studying ceasefires for a long time, and we often consider that the effects of ceasefires are always positive and beneficial. And of course, it is like a pause in fighting is generally a good thing. But my research has been that we should also be conscious of that these things can have negative consequences. So there’s lots of examples from Syria where I’ve done most of my research. But even just in the Ukraine war in the last two years, Russia has proposed humanitarian corridors that have led out of Mariupol, for example. And then Russia has placed mines on those corridors so they haven’t been safe for civilians, then to leave the city or its proposed corridors that have led, you know, not to safety in terms of, you know, a safe space within Ukraine, but back to Russia or to its really close ally, Belarus. So the humanitarian corridors haven’t in any way been a safe space for civilians, basically.

Sam Hawley: Mhm. All right. Well, Marika, there is hope that this is the start of something bigger that the four day pause in fighting could be extended further, that this could be the start of something much longer lasting. What do you think the chances of that might be?

Dr Marika Sosnowski: Of course. I mean, that’s what we, we hope for. Look, ceasefires are the best thing so far. Humans have devised to sort of stop fighting for a period of time. That’s the kind of the best we’ve got, even with the negative consequences that they might have. It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s really very much just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to happen, sort of a longer term stability in the region, and particularly for Israelis and Palestinians.

Sam Hawley: Dr. Marika Sosnowski is a research fellow at the Melbourne Law School. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald, Nell Whitehead, Anna John and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. Don’t forget to fill out our survey in the show notes or on our website. It’ll be there until Monday. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.