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JERUSALEM — The first break in Israel’s seven-week assault on Gaza began Friday with a temporary combat pause that gave besieged Gazans a chance to emerge and set the stage for an exchange of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
The uneasy calm — a 96-hour intermission before the war is expected to resume — began at 7 a.m. per the terms of an accord brokered between Israel and Hamas in recent days. The Israeli military will keep its forces in place but cease attacks as captives are swapped in small tranches, starting with an expected 13 Israelis for 39 Palestinians prisoners later Friday — as well as 12 Thai workers that were taken.
Additional Israelis are expected to be released in batches for a total of 50 over the four days, in exchange for 150 Palestinians.
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Humanitarian aid trucks immediately mobilized from Egypt as international agencies raced to take advantage of the long-sought pause in fighting. Within minutes of the halt, Gazans filled rubble-strewn streets, many of them impassable, under skies that were clear of fighter jets and drones for the first time in weeks.
Video posted on social media showed children running with what seemed to be pleasure rather than fear. Families carried bundles as some of the estimated 1.7 million displaced — 80 percent of the population — sought provisions and to secure better shelter.
Ayman Amin ventured out for the first time in five days from his home in Gaza City, where he has been taking cover with his wife, three children and a sister. He stepped into a wasteland of ruined buildings where some neighbors were pulling bodies from the rubble.
“We left the house, but our souls are still filled with fear, whether it’s from what we see or the possibility of returning to war after four days,” Amin told The Post. “Today is completely sunny, but fear still lingers in people’s eyes.”
Israel warned Gazans not to treat the pause as a return to normal. Minutes before the scheduled halt in fighting, the military dropped leaflets and sent voice texts telling residents “the war is not over” and forbidding those who had fled south from trying to return to their homes in the north.
Those still living in the northern areas saw evidence that Israel is prepared to back up the threats. In a voice message to The Washington Post, Mahmoud, 36, described a phalanx of Israeli tanks deployed along Nasser Street in northern Gaza City, a clear warning for civilians not to enter large sections of the city. There was heavy-caliber shooting nearby, he said.
“The situation is so dangerous,” he said.
Four tankers of fuel and four of cooking gas entered Gaza through Egypt, the first of what aid workers hope will be surge of relief materials for millions who are hanging on with dwindling food, power, sanitation and health care. Hamas has said 200 trucks would deliver aid daily during the pause.
Only limited aid has been allowed to cross in almost two months of intense bombing. Fuel supplies are depleted, leaving many hospitals, bakeries, water supplies and phone networks unable to function without the electricity supplied by generators amid collapsing humanitarian conditions.
Implementing the agreement, which the Israeli cabinet voted to approve early Wednesday morning, was delayed for 24 hours by last-minute wrangling over logistics, according to Qatari mediators. A final list of the first 13 hostages was delivered to Israel late Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, and those families were told to be ready.
Hundreds of family members of hostages braced for days of whipsaw emotions, ready to see some captives walk, or be carried, out of Gaza, but perhaps not their own loved ones. The 50 expected in this deal are all women and children.
“Of course the children have to come back first,” said Adva Adar, whose 85-year-old grandmother Yaffa Adar, 85, was driven into Gaza in her own golf cart. “But we can’t forget the others, and we can’t forget the elders.”
The hostages will emerge from 49 days of captivity into a region that has been transformed by war and devastation since their last contact with the outside on Oct. 7. Some may learn for the first time that the Hamas forces that captured them that day also killed their own parents, siblings and friends.
“There are children with parents that have died or were murdered,” Ziv Agmon, adviser to the head of the National Public Diplomacy Directorate Israel, said in a briefing to reporters Friday. “And because there was no connection with the hostages, we don’t know what they know and what they don’t.”
The fate of the captives has consumed the Israeli public and growing demonstrations demanding their release helped pushed the government into negotiations. Their return has been meticulously planned, said Agmon, and expected to begin about 4 p.m. local time.
Hamas will transfer the hostages — it was unclear whether they will come individually or in groups — to representatives of the Red Cross, Agmon said, who will escort them across the border. He declined to say whether they would enter Egypt or Israel directly.
The Israeli military would take custody and “identify them physically and via the lists that we have and see that these are the correct people that we are receiving,” he said.
A medical doctor will perform a full physical examination on each, administer immediate aid as necessary and determine whether they should go to one of the five specially prepared hospitals or to their homes.
Only then will hostages finally be able to call their families, either by phone or video call, with counselors on hand to assist with these conversations, particularly when the hostages will be hearing bad news.
After that first family contact, hostages will be transported to hospitals where the reunion with loved ones will occur in private. Teams of male and female physicians, including pediatricians, gynecologists and psychiatrists, will be standing by.
“Today is not going to be an easy day,” Agmon said. “We will begin the day hoping that we will really see a good picture at the end of the day.”
Thailand also confirmed that 12 of its nationals that were also taken on Oct. 7 — mostly working as agricultural laborers — will be included in the swap.
The reciprocal group of 39 Palestinian prisoners will be turned over the International Committee of the Red Cross as soon as the hostages are in Israeli hands, to Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Qadura Fares, the Palestinian commissioner for prisoners, told Reuters Friday the 39 individuals would consist of 24 women and 15 male teenagers and would be handed to the ICRC from Israel’s Ofer military prison. “The minute Israel receives its prisoners at Rafah crossing — the prison authority will hand over the male and female prisoners expected to be released to the Red Cross. The process will happen here in Ofer military camp,” Fares said.
The prisoners will be identified, undergo medical screenings and have their belongings returned, an Israeli official told The Washington Post on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The International Committee of the Red Cross will also be involved in relocating them to the occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem.
Elsewhere in the enclave, images showed signs of life that had been missing from the strip for weeks.
Beit Hanoun in the northwest, children carrying plastic bags gingerly picked their way through the maze of bent metal, crushed concrete and broken glass, making their way south. The streets of Khan Younis were bustling with people who had been afraid to move around. Kids played in the streets, men rode bicycles.
Parker reported from Tel Aviv, Balousha from Amman and Dadouch from Beirut.