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.
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a post to X on Thursday that he will not vote to support U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed ceasefire deal, saying Israel should continue its campaign against Hamas once the hostages have been returned.
"Mixed emotions on a complex morning," Smotrich -- a prominent advocate of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, reviving settlements in Gaza and curtailing any Palestinian political independence -- said in a post to X, expressing "immense joy for the return of all our abducted."
Smotrich heads the Religious Zionism party which controls seven seats in the Knesset and is part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government.
Smotrich said he had "great fear of the consequences of emptying prisons and releasing the next generation of terror leadership, which will do everything to continue spilling rivers of Jewish blood," referring to Israel's agreement to release a large number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
"For this reason alone, we cannot join the short-sighted celebrations and vote in favor of the deal," Smotrich said.
The minister added that he felt a "tremendous responsibility" to ensure that the ceasefire deal does not constitute an agreement for "hostages in exchange for stopping the war."
Smotrich said he hoped that "immediately after the hostages return home, the state of Israel will continue to strive with all its might for the true eradication of Hamas and the genuine disarmament of Gaza, so that it no longer poses a threat to Israel."
