Getting a truce between Hamas and Israel was excruciating. Now comes the hard part
CBC
The contrasting reactions between Palestinians and Israelis to the long-awaited news of an impending hostage exchange and ceasefire have been telling.
As word of an agreement spread across Gaza, there was jubilation and joy that the devastation inflicted by Israel's bombs might finally end and that hundreds of thousands of displaced people might be able to return to their former neighbourhoods, even if their dwellings have been turned to rubble.
The United Nations estimates more than two-thirds of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged. The unrelenting Israeli bombardment over the last 15 months has also killed more than 46,500 people, according to Palestinian officials.
In the occupied West Bank, there were also celebrations amid claims of victory. Hundreds of Palestinians serving jail sentences in Israeli prisons — some for violent crimes — are set to be freed to return to their families, along with many others who were detained without ever facing a trial.
But in the streets of Jerusalem on Thursday morning, there was no such euphoria. One group of protesters draped Israeli flags over caskets to symbolize the hostages they say the deal will likely leave behind in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israel's cabinet, which has still to officially endorse the deal, delayed a morning vote on the agreement, accusing Hamas of reneging on it just hours after it was signed.
Under the deal reached on Wednesday, 33 hostages are set to be released over the next six weeks in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Israeli forces will pull back from many areas in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be able to return to what's left of their homes, and there would be a surge of humanitarian assistance.
With roughly 30 detainees and prisoners released for every Israeli hostage, as many as 1,000 Palestinians could be released. More than 60 Israelis are believed to be still alive and held captive in Gaza, but only the very young or very sick and young women will be included in the first group to be returned, beginning on Sunday.
The announced deal has split the country.
"Israelis are very happy about the deal, and simultaneously tormented and agonizing over it," Dahlia Scheindlin, a Canadian Israeli pollster and political analyst based in Tel Aviv, told the BBC.
While acknowledging that 33 hostages would be released in the first phase, "nobody knows if it will actually reach a second phase."
The only pause in the war came in November 2023, when 105 captives were freed by Hamas. But that ceasefire collapsed.
That pause came nearly two months after militants from Hamas and other groups in Gaza rampaged through southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages, according to Israeli government tallies. In the war that followed, Israel says 405 of its soldiers died, as have some of the hostages, either by execution or accidentally during Israeli attacks.
Even before U.S. President Joe Biden and president-elect Donald Trump made competing statements this week taking credit for the deal, there was widespread talk in Israel of betrayal. Israeli media has run stories alleging secret deals between Netanyahu and his far-right partners to resume the war after the initial six-week pause and damn the hostages to their fate.
Foreboding weather forecasts keep tensions high in Los Angeles as one of North America's largest cities battles wildfires that have already claimed at least two dozen lives and thousands of homes.
Qatari mediators have sent Israel and Hamas a draft proposal for an agreement to halt the fighting in the Gaza Strip and exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners as a first step toward an end to the 15-month-old war.
Over the last nine months of the war in Gaza, Nora al-Batran was pregnant with twins. The 38-year-old was displaced multiple times with her husband and children as they skirted bombs and gunfire and sought refuge in a tent in the town of Deir al Balah.
U.S. special counsel Jack Smith has resigned from the Justice Department after submitting his investigative report on president-elect Donald Trump, an expected move that comes amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead.
When people think of wildfires, burning trees are likely the first image that comes to mind.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has escaped any legal punishment other than a criminal record for his felony crimes, after a judge on Friday handed him an alternative sentence called an unconditional discharge.
Thursday was marked by massive marches and a confused high-profile abduction in Venezuela, on the same day that Canada recognized opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as the legitimate president of the country.
Firefighters battled early Thursday to control a series of major fires in the Los Angeles area that have killed five people, ravaged communities and sent thousands of people frantically fleeing their homes.
Finland says it has found more than two dozen serious deficiencies aboard the impounded Eagle S, a ship that was carrying Russian oil and is accused of deliberately dragging its anchor in the Baltic Sea on Dec. 25, damaging an underwater power line and four telecommunication cables.
As if having the ear of incoming U.S. president Donald Trump weren't enough, tech billionaire Elon Musk has been on a tear this week, trashing European politicians on both the left and right, and using posts on his social media platform, X, to disrupt politics across the continent.
A wildfire whipped up by extreme winds swept through a Los Angeles hillside dotted with celebrity residences Tuesday, burning homes and prompting evacuation orders for tens of thousands. In the frantic haste to get to safety, roadways were clogged and scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.
A strong earthquake killed at least 95 people in Tibet on Tuesday and left many others trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the high-altitude region of western China and across the border in Nepal.
For two centuries, the certification of U.S. presidential election results was little more than a ceremonial rubber stamp by Congress.
Gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank on Monday, killing at least three people and wounding seven others.
FBI officials on Sunday said their investigation into the deadly truck attack in New Orleans is now "crossing state and international borders" and that the attacker had travelled to both Egypt and Canada.
Jimmy Carter 's extended public farewell began Saturday in Georgia, with the 39th U.S. president's flag-draped casket tracing his long arc from the Depression-era South and family farming business to the pinnacle of American political power and decades as a global humanitarian.
A judge Friday set U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's sentencing in his hush money case for Jan. 10 — a little over a week before he's due to return to the White House — but indicated he wouldn't be jailed.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is "strong and unpredictable," and those qualities can be a decisive factor in his policy approach to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.