Gaza ceasefire: Netanyahu vows to return to war if necessary

As the ceasefire approaches, hundreds of thousands of Gazans hope to return to what remains of their homes.

Hanaa Dabban, a nurse who was displaced from the Jabalia refugee camp, said the first thing she wanted to do was return to her home in northern Gaza.

"We are going through the hardest days of our lives and of this war," the 24-year-old told DW by phone from Gaza. "We are waiting for the ceasefire on Sunday. I don't know what that day will bring, but I am afraid of what lies ahead — afraid that I will not find our home in Jabalia camp, from which we fled under fire. The details of that moment will stay with me forever."

On Saturday evening, the Israeli military warned displaced people not to approach certain areas where the military is still present, including the Netzarim corridor, which divides southern and northern Gaza. The military presence there does not allow movement between the two areas.

This is only one of many obstacles. Much of the small Palestinian territory has been destroyed and many will have no home to return to. But Dabban is determined to return home.

"We'll set up our tent there, and I hope to find a wall to lean my back against," Dabaan said.

But she also acknowledged that there is still a long way to go: "Gaza and the north will be crowded again, but it will never be the same as it was before the war. Not everyone we lost will return, and our mental state will never fully recover."

This was echoed by Mahmound Tawil, who was displaced to Deir al-Balah. He and his family were displaced from the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.

"I have been waiting for this moment for a long time," he said. "Yes, I will return to al Shati camp, but not on the first day — I don't know how dangerous the road will be. I know our house was destroyed in the first days of the war, but I will return with my wife, four children, my mother, sisters and brothers."

But Tawil said he is also worried about the future.

"The war is not truly over," he said. "The killing continues, and I don't know if the bloodshed will end after the ceasefire. We are no longer the same people. While I am relieved that the war is ending, I am heartbroken over what has happened, why it happened, and how long it will take for us to rebuild our lives. All we want is security, peace, justice, and a decent life — nothing more."

As they have for every Saturday night for almost 15 months, hundreds of people gathered outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's official residence to demand the release of the hostages in Gaza. Some held posters of the 98 remaining hostages taken during the Hamas terror attack on southern Israel on 7 October. Most had taped stickers on their jackets with the number 470 — the number of days the hostages have been held in captivity.

But tonight, there was a glimmer of hope that finally, by tomorrow evening, the first hostages will be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

"We've been here every Saturday night, it's better than staying at home alone in this difficult situation," Inbar told DW, declining to give her last name. Her partner, Eshel, added: "We're really unsure of what's going to happen. We just crossing our fingers and hoping for the best, trying to stay optimistic, but that's all we can do right now and just stay together."

Marc Glassman, another protester, said he hoped as many hostages as possible would be freed.

"We just hope, and we care about the hostages," he said. "It's a harder experience than I want anybody to go through.

"We also hope that there is a way to get to a better place for the people on the other side, for the Palestinians," Glassman said. "But we don't think that Hamas running Gaza is going to lead to peace in the long term. And that's a great failure of our government. We don't have plan for the day after."

Many here fear that some hostages to be released in the second phase of the ceasefire deal may be left behind. According to the current agreement, the second phase is to be negotiated from day 16. Still, some Cabinet ministers in Netanyahu's government have already said they won't support negotiations for a permanent ceasefire.

"That's what we're scared about, if they don't go to a second phase. I think that's the next political struggle. We have to protest for them to go all the way into a deal and to bring them all home, and to respect all the agreements. Because if it doesn't happen, some of the hostages will remain back there," said Michael, holding a sign with the names of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, two young children who were taken hostage with their parents in Gaza.

He said he knows one of the hostage families well and has come to the nearly every week to protest.

"I'm anxious. I think we all are anxious because a lot of things can go wrong. And if things go wrong, people will sadly die or be harmed," he added. "But still, I feel it's important to show everyone that we're here supporting an agreement to save lives, to save the hostages, to save the people in Gaza as well. And to end this war once and for all and bring some justice to this land."

Dozens of Israelis protested the ceasefire deal in Jerusalem on Saturday night, briefly blocking a main road as they shouted for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign and the war to continue.

People carried banners calling the ceasefire a "betrayal" of Israeli soldiers killed in the war. Protesters also called for incoming US President Donald Trump to scrap the deal until Hamas militants were fully defeated. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended an upcoming ceasefire agreement with Hamas, insisting that he negotiated the best deal possible to secure the release of hostages and halt fighting that began with a surprise Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

Nearly 100 hostages remain in Hamas' hands, of these, 33 are to be released in exchange for 1,904 Palestinian prisoners. Although most of the Palestinians are Gaza residents and many more were jailed for minor infractions, others are serving time for murder and other serious crimes.  

Far-right hardliners like Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have voiced strong opposition to Netanyahu's deal, calling it "reckless."

Ben-Gvir has said that he and several ministers from his party will resign from the Netanyahu government on Sunday as a result.

Though the resignations will neither topple Netanyahu nor sink the ceasefire deal, they present yet another risk for a prime minister who already finds himself in a precarious political situation. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country views a pending ceasefire with Hamas militants in Gaza as temporary, adding that Israel reserves the right to resume hostilities if Hamas fails to uphold its end of the deal.

"We reserve the right to resume the war if necessary, with American support," Netanyahu said in a televised statement. 

Netanyahu, who claimed to have the full support of incoming US President Donald Trump, said the conflict would resume "with force" if Hamas failed to provide a list containing the names of the 33 hostages it intends to release as part of the deal. 

Up to 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in multiple Israeli prisons are expected to be released in stages, in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages, during the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage deal.

The first to be released are expected to be young Palestinians, some of them children, or female prisoners.

They are being held for a wide range of crimes, such as incitement, vandalism, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, supporting terrorist activities and attempted murder.

Across the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, families were waiting for more details about when their loved ones would be released from detention.

Rasha Zughaibi in Jenin, who lives in the northern occupied West Bank, told DW that she hoped that her sister Nidaa sould be among the first to be freed.

She is a mother of three who has been held in Damon prison in Israel since June last year on charges of online incitement, her sister said. According to her family, she was arrested because of posts she made on Facebook.

“We are happy but also very cautious, we have a mix of feelings, we are very worried that things can change at the last minute, God knows what can happen," Rasha Zughaibi said.

She added that the family has decorated the house to welcome her sister home.

“We miss her very much and we can’t wait to see her," Zughaibi said, adding that at the same time, the news was bittersweet because the situation in Gaza was extremely sad and difficult after 15 months of war.

The World Health Organization’s director-general has hailed the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage agreement, saying it "offers great hope."

"The ceasefire agreement offers great hope that Israeli hostages will be liberated after more than 450 days in Gaza," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.

"I’ve met many of their families and some of those who were released previously — they all suffered for too long. We mourn those who died in captivity."

He said the deal also offered hope for Palestinian prisoners to return home, saying both hostages and prisoners will have likely faced, and continue to face, "complex health challenges" that could take years to address.

The family of Kfir Bibas, the youngest hostage kidnapped on October 7, 2023, marked his second birthday on Saturday, a day before a ceasefire is expected to go into effect.

Kfir was less than nine months old when he was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his brother Ariel, now 5, and parents Shiri and Yarden Bibas. It is unknown if the family is still alive.

To mark Kfir's birthday, his family commissioned copies of the pink elephant Kfir is clutching in his hands in the famous hostage photo that has been posted around the world, in hopes that when he comes home they will be able to bring him his favorite toy.

The entire Bibas family is expected to be released in the first six weeks of the ceasefire, according to lists obtained by the Associated Press.

Israel said it will not move forward with the ceasefire agreement until it receives a list of the hostages Hamas plans to release, according to a statement from Netanyahu's office posted on X.

"We will be unable to move forward with the framework until we receive the list of the hostages who will be released, as was agreed. Israel will not tolerate violations of the agreement. Hamas is solely responsible," the statement read.

The Israeli military said it intercepted another missile launched from Yemen toward southern Israel.

"Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in the areas of Eilat and Arava, a missile that was launched from Yemen was intercepted" by the Israeli air defense, the military said.

It added that the missile was intercepted before it entered Israeli territory. There were no reports of rocket impact or injuries.

It was the second such attack today, after a missile fired at central Israel from Yemen was shot down earlier this morning.

The Houthi rebels, who control large parts of Yemen, said they would counter any "violations or military escalation" by Israel during the ceasefire period.

Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, told DW that the ceasefire is very "precarious" and that the US will play an important role in making sure it sticks.

"We'd like to see it coming into effect tomorrow morning. It will already be a huge relief," she said during an interview.

Zonszein argued that the stakes are high, since some from the hard far right in Israel's governing coalition oppose the ceasefire deal and have threatened to leave the coalition.

On the other hand, Hamaswould like to make sure the deal survives so the militant group can keep people hostage to keep negotiations going, Zonszein said.

"I am hoping that (Donald) Trump, because he put so much political capital into clinching a deal, will also be involved in getting the deal to hold," she added.

Egyptian officials inspected preparations for the delivery of aid to the neighboring Gaza Strip, a day before a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas is set to take effect.

Egypt's ministers of health and social solidarity inspected the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza and a logistics area where some 600 aid trucks are stationed, local officials said.

The two ministers also toured hospitals and medical facilities in North Sinai that are preparing to receive the wounded from Gaza, and inspected equipment of the Egyptian Red Crescent and its logistics warehouses.

Last May, Israel took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in an operation that halted aid deliveries.

According to the ceasefire agreement, the Rafah crossing will be opened in the first phase of the plan but the Israeli army will not withdraw from there.

Despite the imminent ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli warplanes have continued attacking sites in the Palestinian enclave, with health authorities in the Hamas-run territory saying on Saturday that 23 people were killed there in the previous 24 hours.

The Israeli army said in a statement on Saturday that it had conducted strikes on 50 "terror targets" across Gaza on Friday.

On Friday, the Palestinian civil emergency service said 116 Palestinians, almost 60 of them women and children, had been killed in Gaza since the deal was announced on Wednesday ahead of its approval on Saturday by the Israeli government. 

The truce is due to go into effect on Sunday.

A spokesman for the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad group in Gaza said on Saturday that families of hostages taken during the Hamas-led militants' attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, should ask the Israeli military to stop its strikes in the captives' interest.

Abu Hamza, who is with the al Quds Brigades, said the intensified strikes "would be reason for killing their children."

The militant group also holds some hostages alongside those taken captive by Hamas.

The ceasefire deal stipulates that hostages held in Gaza be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel during several phases.

Lebanon's new president, Joseph Aoun stressed the urgency of an Israeli military withdrawal from southern Lebanon as stipulated under the November 27 ceasefire accord, which ended a two-month-long war between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah.

The deal states that the Lebanese army has 60 days to deploy alongside peacekeepers from the UNIFIL mission in southern Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws.

Aoun held talks with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterreson Saturday, during the UN chief's visit to Lebanon.

Aoun told Guterres during a meeting in Beirut that continued Israeli breaches were a violation of Lebanese sovereignty and the agreed ceasefire deal, according to a Lebanese presidency statement posted on X.

In remarks made on Friday during a visit to Lebanon, Guterres called on Israel to end its military operations and "occupation" in southern Lebanon .

He also said that UN peacekeepers in the country had found more than 100 caches with weapons from "Hezbollah or other armed groups."

The ceasefire deal also says Hezbollah must pull its forces back from the border to Israel and dismantle any military infrastructure it still possesses in the southern region.

The powerful militia's leader, Naim Qassem, on Saturday accused Israel of hundreds of ceasefire violations and warned it "not to test our patience."

Aoun, the former army chief, has meanwhile vowed that the Lebanese state would have a "monopoly" on bearing weapons.

Hezbollah, as well as having a dominant political presence in Lebanon, possesses an armed wing that is seen as stronger than the Lebanese Armed Forces. It is listed as a terrorist organization by several countries including the US and Germany.