Wednesday, Jan. 15 2025, Qatar prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani announced that a ceasefire deal has been reached to end the 15-month-long conflict between Israel and Gaza. 

This is a three-phase ceasefire that promises the release of hostages held by militants in Gaza and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, and allows for humanitarian aid to go into areas touched by the war. It will also allow the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza to return to what’s left of their homes, with Israeli forces withdrawing from the area, back to the border.    

Phase one of the ceasefire will take effect Sunday and will be the first break in fighting since a week-long truce ended on Dec. 1, 2023. It will approximately last six weeks and it will include prisoner swaps, Israeli troop withdrawal and increased humanitarian aid to the impacted areas. Phase two and three are more aspirational with the hopes of a permanent stop to the fighting happening in phase two, and Gaza’s political future being secured in phase three. 

In a briefing held Wednesday, President Joe Biden said, “During the next six weeks, Israel will negotiate the necessary arrangements to get phase two, which is a permanent end of the war.”  

As of now, though, the only official binding contract of the deal is a six-week-long break in fighting that Hamas called a “crucial turning point” in the conflict, but the deal has yet to be approved by the Israeli cabinet.