A cease­fire be­tween Is­rael and Hamas came in­to ef­fect in Gaza on Fri­day, the mil­i­tary said, hours af­ter Is­rael’s Cab­i­net ap­proved a deal to pause the fight­ing and ex­change the re­main­ing hostages for Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers.

Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple who had gath­ered in Wa­di Gaza in cen­tral Gaza start­ed walk­ing north af­ter the Is­raeli mil­i­tary’s an­nounce­ment at noon lo­cal time. Be­fore­hand, Pales­tini­ans re­port­ed heavy shelling in parts of Gaza through­out Fri­day morn­ing, but no sig­nif­i­cant bom­bard­ment was re­port­ed af­ter.

The cease­fire marks a key step to­ward end­ing a ru­inous two-year war that has killed tens of thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans, re­duced much of Gaza to rub­ble, desta­bi­lized the Mid­dle East, and left dozens of hostages, liv­ing and dead, in the ter­ri­to­ry.

Still, the broad­er plan ad­vanced by U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in­cludes many unan­swered ques­tions, such as whether and how Hamas will dis­arm and who will gov­ern Gaza.

De­spite those ques­tions, Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu in­sist­ed in a tele­vised state­ment Fri­day that the next stages would see Hamas dis­arm and Gaza de­mil­i­ta­rized.

“If this is achieved the easy way — so be it. If not — it will be achieved the hard way,” Ne­tanyahu said. He added that Hamas agreed to the deal “on­ly when it felt that the sword was on its neck — and it is still on its neck.”

Is­raeli Brig. Gen. Effie De­frin, an Is­raeli mil­i­tary spokesman, said that troops had com­plet­ed their with­draw­al to the de­ploy­ment lines by Fri­day af­ter­noon, a few hours af­ter the cease­fire of­fi­cial­ly went in­to ef­fect.

Ear­li­er, an Is­raeli se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty due to the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the with­draw­al, said the mil­i­tary would con­trol around 50% of Gaza in their new po­si­tions.

Shelling con­tin­ued ear­ly Fri­day

In cen­tral Gaza’s Nu­seirat refugee camp, Mah­moud Sharkawy, one of the many peo­ple shel­ter­ing there af­ter be­ing dis­placed from Gaza City, said ar­tillery shelling in­ten­si­fied in the ear­ly hours of Fri­day be­fore the mil­i­tary’s an­nounce­ment.

“The shelling has sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased to­day,” said Sharkawy, adding that low fly­ing mil­i­tary air­craft had been fly­ing over cen­tral Gaza.

Res­i­dents of Gaza City in the north al­so re­port­ed shelling in the ear­ly hours.

“It is con­fus­ing, we have been hear­ing shelling all night de­spite the cease­fire news,” said He­ba Garoun, who fled her home in east­ern Gaza City to an­oth­er neigh­bor­hood af­ter her house was de­stroyed.

The war be­gan when Hamas-led mil­i­tants stormed in­to Is­rael on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 peo­ple and tak­ing and 251 hostage.

In Is­rael’s en­su­ing of­fen­sive, more than 67,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed in Gaza and near­ly 170,000 wound­ed, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants but says around half the deaths were women and chil­dren. The min­istry is part of the Hamas-run gov­ern­ment, and the Unit­ed Na­tions and many in­de­pen­dent ex­perts con­sid­er its fig­ures to be the most re­li­able es­ti­mate of wartime ca­su­al­ties.

The war has al­so trig­gered oth­er con­flicts in the re­gion, sparked world­wide protests and led to al­le­ga­tions of geno­cide that Is­rael de­nies.

How the agree­ment is ex­pect­ed to un­fold

Un­der the deal, Is­raeli troops have with­drawn to new po­si­tions in Gaza, and all 48 hostages still in cap­tiv­i­ty are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased. Is­rael be­lieves around 20 of them are alive.

In ex­change, Is­rael will re­lease around 2,000 Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers. A list of those pris­on­ers pub­lished Fri­day by Is­rael did not in­clude high-pro­file pris­on­er Mar­wan Bargh­outi, the most pop­u­lar Pales­tin­ian leader and a po­ten­tial­ly uni­fy­ing fig­ure. Is­rael views him and some oth­ers as ter­ror­ist mas­ter­minds who mur­dered Is­raeli civil­ians and has re­fused to re­lease them in past ex­changes.

Khalil al-Hayya, a se­nior Hamas of­fi­cial and lead ne­go­tia­tor, said in a speech Thurs­day evening that all women and chil­dren held in Is­raeli jails will be freed.

“We de­clare to­day that we have reached an agree­ment to end the war and the ag­gres­sion against our peo­ple,” al-Hayya said.

The hostage and pris­on­er re­leas­es are ex­pect­ed to be­gin Mon­day, two Egypt­ian of­fi­cials briefed on the talks and a Hamas of­fi­cial said, though an­oth­er of­fi­cial said they could oc­cur as ear­ly as Sun­day night. The of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­rized to be pub­licly named speak­ing about the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

All liv­ing hostages are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased at the same time, fol­lowed by the bod­ies of the de­ceased, which could take more time.

Five bor­der cross­ings are ex­pect­ed to re­open, in­clud­ing the Rafah cross­ing be­tween Gaza and Egypt, the Egypt­ian and Hamas of­fi­cials said. That will al­low aid to flow in­to the ter­ri­to­ry, parts of which are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing famine.

Tom Fletch­er, the U.N. hu­man­i­tar­i­an chief, told re­porters Thurs­day that of­fi­cials have 170,000 met­ric tons of med­i­cine, aid and oth­er sup­plies at ready for trans­port in­to Gaza when they are giv­en a green light.

The Trump plan calls for Is­rael to main­tain an open-end­ed mil­i­tary pres­ence in­side Gaza, along its bor­der with Is­rael. An in­ter­na­tion­al force, com­prised large­ly of troops from Arab and Mus­lim coun­tries, would be re­spon­si­ble for se­cu­ri­ty in­side Gaza.

To help sup­port and mon­i­tor the cease­fire deal, U.S. of­fi­cials said they would send about 200 troops to Is­rael as part of a broad­er, in­ter­na­tion­al team. The of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss de­tails not au­tho­rized for re­lease.

The U.S. would al­so lead a mas­sive in­ter­na­tion­al­ly fund­ed re­con­struc­tion ef­fort.

The plan al­so en­vi­sions an even­tu­al role for the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty — some­thing Ne­tanyahu has long op­posed. But it re­quires the au­thor­i­ty, which ad­min­is­ters parts of the West Bank, to un­der­go a sweep­ing re­form pro­gram that could take years.

The Trump plan is even more vague about a fu­ture Pales­tin­ian state, which Ne­tanyahu firm­ly re­jects. —WA­DI GAZA, Gaza Strip (AP) ‘

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Sto­ry by AB­DEL KA­REEM HANA, WAFAA SHU­RAFA and MELANIE LID­MAN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Wafaa Shu­rafa re­port­ed from Deir al-Bal­ah, Gaza Strip, and Melanie Lid­man re­port­ed from Tel Aviv, Is­rael. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Sam Med­nick in Tel Aviv, Is­rael, and Samy Magdy in Cairo al­so con­tributed.