President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that both Israel and Hamas had "signed off" on the first phase of a peace plan in Gaza following negotiations in the Egyptian Red Sea city of Sharm el-Sheikh. A ceasefire then came into effect on Friday.
Phase one of the deal will see all remaining hostages returned from Gaza, a number of Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails and the partial withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces inside the strip.
The Israel Defense Forces is preparing for the transfer and return of the hostages as part of the implementation of the ceasefire agreement in the coming morning hours, a security official told ABC News.
Red Cross vehicles were seen in Khan Younis and are expected to pick up Palestinian prisoners that the Israelis will release Monday morning.
Hamas published a list of the 20 living Israeli hostages set to be released around 7 a.m. local time, Monday morning.
The names are:
In his nationally televised address Sunday night, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said he and his wife "met many times with the families of the kidnapped. We saw their pain, their longing, their tears."
"These meetings accompanied me in every decision I made during the war," Netanyahu said. "We hugged the families, and I promised them: 'I will not rest until I bring back your loved ones.'"
"Tomorrow is the beginning of a new path," Netanyahu added, in part. "A path of construction, a path of healing and, I hope, a path of uniting hearts.
Expecting the initial care of the soon-to-be-released hostages to "be more complex" than that of those who were previously returned, the Israeli Ministry of Health has prepared a protocol for treating the 20 people expected to be returned from captivity.
"From a medical standpoint, the complexity of feeding the returnees has increased compared to previous cases, due to their two-year captivity and the risk of severe malnutrition and the development of refeeding syndrome," according to the Ministry of Health's protocol.
During their hospitalization, the freed hostages will be assigned medical teams that will include attending physicians, consulting physicians, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, dietitians and forensic physicians, according to the Ministry of Health. Those medical teams are expected to hold multidisciplinary discussions "to create a comprehensive professional clinical picture and to develop a personalized treatment plan," the Ministry of Health said.
"A psychiatric evaluation must be conducted, at minimum, within 24 hours of the released individual’s admission," according to the Ministry of Health.
