By CatholicVote | Created at 2025-01-15 23:31:13 | Updated at 2025-01-16 03:16:33
3 hours ago
CV NEWS FEED // After 14 months of deadly violence, Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire and hostage deal, according to numerous Jan. 15 reports.
Axios reports that the ceasefire will go into effect Jan. 19, according to Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani. The Israeli cabinet will reportedly meet on Jan. 16 to approve the hostage and ceasefire deal.
The ceasefire deal stipulates that Israeli forces would withdraw to the Gaza border and humanitarian aid will be brought to Gaza’s enclave, according to NBC News. Additionally, Hamas will release 33 hostages, in exchange for 100 Palestinian prisoners.
According to NBC News, “Israel will also release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners who were not involved in the Oct. 7 attacks, the text says, and an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners will also be released abroad or in Gaza.”
The ceasefire announcement comes just days before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who said in a Jan. 15 Truth Social post that winning the November election was crucial for making the ceasefire deal possible.
“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” Trump wrote.
He added that his National Security team, through Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, “will continue to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven.”
According to Newsweek, incoming Special Envoy Witkoff last week joined officials from the Biden administration in Qatar’s capital to further ceasefire negotiation efforts.
This week, two Arab officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Times of Israel that Witkoff had a “tense” meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this weekend that made significant advancement in the deal.
The officials said that the meeting “led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year,” the Times of Israel reported Jan. 15.
Trump stated in his post that promotion of peace in the region will be an ongoing effort.
“This is only the beginning of great things to come,” he added, “for America, and indeed, the World!”
Jason Jones, a Catholic and president of the Vulnerable People Project (VPP), wrote in a Jan. 15 article for the American Conservative that Trump has previously spoken about the importance of bringing peace to Gaza, and credited him with mediating the conflict.
Jones also noted that the Middle East Observer reports that journalist and Netanyahu ally Ariel Segal said Israel is “the first to pay the price for Trump’s election.”
“We expected that we would take control of northern Gaza and prevent humanitarian aid,” Segal added, according to the Observer.
According to the VPP’s Cease Fire Now website, Palestine’s death toll from the war surpassed 30,000 by April 2024.
In a Jan. 15 statement published by the U.S. Embassy in Israel, President Joe Biden said that the ceasefire deal took “many months of intensive diplomacy by the United States, along with Egypt and Qatar.”
He also said the deal “is the result not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran — but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy.”
Biden added that amid this good news, it is important to remember the families who lost loved ones killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and the many innocent victims of the war afterward.
“It is long past time for the fighting to end and the work of building peace and security to begin,” he continued. “I am also [of] thinking of the American families, three of whom have living hostages in Gaza and four awaiting return of remains after what has been the most horrible ordeal imaginable. Under this deal, we are determined to bring all of them home.”
Last year, Pope Francis called for October 7, 2024, to be a day of prayer and fasting for peace. Additionally, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, has continuously encouraged Christians in Gaza amid the conflict, and has visited the Catholic parish in Gaza multiple times during the war. He has called for peace in the region and has preached on the importance of forgiveness and charity especially in the aftermath of the war.
>> Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem: Only Jesus can provide meaning, peace in current violent times <<
