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European leaders have expressed hope that the first phase of the deal reached between Hamas and Israel on Wednesday could lead to prolonged peace.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the deal “must now be implemented to the letter,” adding: “This ceasefire opens the door to a permanent end to the war and to the improvement of the poor humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed the “long-overdue news” of the deal, and called for “a huge surge in humanitarian aid” to the battered enclave.

“After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, this is the long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for,” Starmer said in a statement, adding that the international community’s attention should now turn to securing a “permanently better future for the Israeli and Palestinian people, grounded in a two-state solution.”

Starmer hailed the release of hostages who are expected to return home as part of Wednesday’s deal, who were “ripped from their homes on that day and held captive in unimaginable conditions ever since,” while paying tribute to those who will not make it home, “including the British people who were murdered by Hamas.”

As news of the ceasefire deal emerged, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an X post: “The agreement must be respected. The hostages, freed. The Gazans, rescued. A political solution must be found.”

The parents of an Israeli-American hostage killed by Hamas welcomed the ceasefire-hostage deal, but warned its next phases are still in flux.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was captured by Hamas at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, was one of six hostages whose bodies were discovered by the Israeli military in tunnels under Gaza shortly after they were killed by the militants in August.

The killed hostage’s father, Jon Polin, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that his family and others had “paid a very dear price” for the delayed implementation of a ceasefire deal last year but also expressed optimism for the weeks ahead.

“It is critical that everybody – that the outgoing Biden administration lays the groundwork for the incoming Trump administration, the Qataris, the Egyptians and all mediators – to ensure that the deal gets executed as it is supposed to, and that it moves to phases two and three,” Polin said, alongside his wife, Rachel Goldberg.

Hamas and its allies still hold 94 people taken from Israel. As part of the first phase of the deal, 33 hostages are expected to be released – including female soldiers, children, the elderly and the sick – in exchange for an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners.

The first phase of the deal is expected to start Sunday and last for six weeks. But details and timelines of the second and third phases are less developed.

“We have gotten to know so many of the hostage families that we are excited to see them embrace their loved one,” Polin said. “We are, in a strange way, also saying we’re excited that the families of the deceased will get to give their loved ones proper and respectful burial. All of it is so important.”

Three female Israeli civilian hostages are expected to be released on the first day of the ceasefire agreed by Israel and Hamas, according to a document shared by senior Hamas official Bassem Naim.

The ceasefire and hostage deal is expected to come into effect on January 19 and include three phases, each of which will last 42 days, according to the document.

The first phase is expected to see the release of 33 hostages held in Gaza.

According to the document, three female Israeli hostages will be released by Hamas on the first day and then on the seventh day, Hamas is set to release four more. Following that “Hamas will release three Israeli detainees every seven days, starting with women (civilians and soldiers),” the document states.

“During the sixth week, Hamas will release all remaining detainees included in this stage, and in return, Israel will release the agreed upon number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, based on lists provided by Hamas,” the document continues.

The second phase of the agreement is expected to see a “permanent cessation of military and hostile operations” and the release of “all remaining Israeli male detainees who are alive (civilians and soldiers) in exchange for a number of prisoners in Israeli prisons and detainees in Israeli detention centers, and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.”

The third phase of the agreement is expected to see the “exchange of all bodies/remains of the dead,” the document says.

The third phase will also see the start of a three- to five-year reconstruction plan for Gaza, according to the document.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday’s deal was reached “after months of determined diplomacy,” while cautioning that it “must be implemented rigorously.”

But he said in a statement Wednesday night that the deal “can open a new window of hope for Israelis and Palestinians after the months of bloodshed and anguish that followed Hamas’s despicable terrorist assault on Israel on October 7, 2023.”

The secretary also recognized that for all those killed in the war, and their families, this deal “has come too late.”

“The Department again offers our deepest condolences to the families of all of our American citizens killed in this harrowing war, and it renews today our unstinting commitment to bring home the Americans still being held in Gaza and to finally return the remains of our slain fellow citizens to their mourning families,” Austin said.

Looking to the future, Austin said: “After these months of terror and trauma, we recommit ourselves today to move toward a more hopeful, secure, and just future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

“Israelis and Palestinians need not be doomed to eternal conflict, and with leadership and wisdom, we can make progress toward the day when Israelis and Palestinians live side by side in peace and security in two sovereign states, with mutual security and dignity.”

Qatar’s prime minister announced that Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire on Wednesday, leading to a pause in fighting and a phased release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Here are some photos of reactions in the region.

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser likened the ceasefire and hostage release deal to when American hostages held at the US Embassy in Tehran were freed just as Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president in 1981.

“This really is a Reagan moment, and we’re quite excited about it,” Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room.”

Waltz said it was “a little unfortunate” how President Joe Biden responded to a question from a reporter earlier in the day about whether he or Trump deserved credit for the deal. Biden said to the reporter, “Is that a joke?”

“I think that was a little unfortunate, frankly. But his State Department spokesman was very clear that President Trump’s election has had tremendous consequences. And we’re seeing tremendously positive consequences,” Waltz said.

Waltz said Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke earlier on Wednesday and noted that the deal will need to gain approval from Israel’s government.

“But look, we’ve made it very clear to our ally Israel that if Hamas reneges on any parts of this deal, we are with them. And that Gaza will be demilitarized, and Hamas will be destroyed,” Waltz said.

Waltz said: “Right now, we should be celebrating that we are going to have people coming out alive, Wolf.”

“I’m convinced that if President Trump were not elected, this deal was stuck. And unfortunately, I don’t know that we would have had anyone coming out alive,” Waltz said.

White House national security communications adviser John Kirby downplayed the back-and-forth on who deserves credit for the ceasefire and hostage deal on CNN Wednesday, arguing that focus should be on securing the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

“There’s an awful lot of credit here to go around,” Kirby told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “I don’t think that the hostages and their families are worried about who’s claiming or grabbing credit here, the president doesn’t want the focus to be on who’s claiming or grabbing credit, he wants the focus to be on the implementation of the deal,” he added.

Earlier Wednesday Biden praised the incoming Trump administration for its participation in the ceasefire deal during remarks from the White House but appeared to dismiss suggestions that Trump deserves credit for the agreement.

Kirby pointed out the real challenge is ensuring the successful execution of the deal – a task that will fall to the incoming Trump administration.

“That’s where the real hard work is going to come now that it’s been put into place, and we know, as the president said, it’s the next team that’s going to have to do that implementing so it was important to him that we approached this as a team.”

UNICEF welcomed the hostages-for-ceasefire deal and vowed to scale up its work in the war-torn enclave.

“This is long overdue for the children and families of Gaza who have endured more than a year of bombardment and deprivation, and for the hostages in Gaza and their families in Israel who have suffered so much,” UNICEF said in a statement Wednesday.

The war in Gaza has been especially hard on children. UNICEF said at least 14,500 children have died and the war has left “17,000 unaccompanied or separated from their parents.”

UNICEF called on both parties to “fully adhere” to the ceasefire and to allow the “necessary level of aid into Gaza” so that it could scale up its treatment for children suffering from malnutrition and “facilitate vaccination catch-up for 420,000 children under 5 years” to help prevent the outbreak of diseases including polio, measles, and cholera.

The father of Israeli hostage Nimrod Cohen says he sees a long fight ahead before his son is released, despite the announcement of a ceasefire-for-hostages deal.

Yehuda Cohen says he doesn’t anticipate his 20-year-old son, a soldier with the Israel Defense Forces, will be among those returned in the first phase of the deal.

The first phase is expected to see the release of 33 hostages, including civilians and female soldiers, children, the elderly and the sick in exchange for an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Wednesday.

“We’re going to start counting days in two tracks. One track is the process of hostages being released. The second track is to count 16 days from the beginning” of the deal, when the second phase is expected to be negotiated, Cohen said.

The Cohen family expects a long period of “fighting” and keeping “the pressure” on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to keep the deal on track, he added.

“We’re talking about reality. Things won’t happen because they happen. Things happen because people make sure they are happening,” he said. “I’m not hoping. I’m fighting for it. If I just sit down and hope or pray, it won’t happen.”

An Israeli strike that hit a residential area in northern Gaza killed at least 12 people and injured 20 others on Wednesday, according to the Gaza Civil Defense.

The statement came shortly after the announcement of the ceasefire-for-hostages deal, which is expected to come into effect on January 19.

The strike hit “a residential block consisting of multiple houses in the vicinity of Sheikh Radwan,” a neighborhood of Gaza City, civil defense said.

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment.

The aunt of an American-Israeli hostage who was released months ago says the families of returnees should be prepared to give them time, space and “a lot of love” to recover.

“I think the only advice [for families] is to take a deep breath and give them a lot of love,” Ella Mor, the aunt of four-year-old Abigail Mor Edan, who was released last November, told CNN’s Dana Bash.

“I expect that the hostages that come back will be totally overwhelmed. I don’t know if they can speak, if they can talk, if they will recognize their beloved ones,” said Mor, who was speaking from Holon, Israel.

“Just give them time, with no press, with no media, no politicians that will come to take a picture.”

Abigail’s parents were killed during the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. She spent 51 days in captivity.

Mor warned that those released would face a long recovery.

“It’s not a going to be a recovery of a few days, it’s a big, big trauma,” she said.

For Israel, the trauma would last generations, “just like the holocaust,” Mor said, adding the hostages “have to come back so we can start this recovery.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make an official announcement on the ceasefire-for-hostages deal only after the final details of the agreement are finalized, his office said in a statement Wednesday evening.

The statement said the final details were “currently being worked on.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken to both US President-elect Donald Trump and US President Joe Biden to thank them for their help in “advancing” the ceasefire-for-hostages deal.

A statement from Netanyahu’s office on Wednesday said he had thanked Trump for “advancing the release of the hostages and for helping Israel bring an end to the suffering of dozens of hostages and their families.”

Netanyahu “emphasized his commitment to bringing back all the hostages by any means necessary” during the call with Trump, the statement said.

“He also welcomed the president-elect’s remarks that the United States will work with Israel to ensure that Gaza will never again become a haven for terror.”

Netanyahu and Trump also discussed plans to meet in Washington, DC, the statement said.

A “very warm call” with Biden: The Israeli statement also noted that Netanyahu had spoken to Biden, thanking him “for his assistance in advancing the hostage deal” but divulging no further details of their conversation.

A senior Biden Administration official told reporters Wednesday that the two leaders spent their call “marking this moment, but also reflecting on the horror that Israel has seen since October 7th, and also the horror that the hostages have faced,” while in Hamas captivity in Gaza.

As president, Biden has often touted his long relationship with the Israeli Prime Minister, acknowledging in an Oval Office meeting with Netanyahu last July that the two have known each other for over four decades.

The United States, Egypt, and Qatar have pledged to fully implement all three phases of the Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal.

A joint statement released by the three countries on Wednesday said the deal was expected to come into effect on January 19 and include three stages.

“The first stage, which lasts for 42 days, includes a ceasefire, the withdrawal and redeployment of Israeli forces outside densely populated areas, the release of hostages and exchange of prisoners and detainees, the exchange of the remains of the deceased, the return of internally displaced persons to their places of residence in the Gaza Strip, and facilitating the departure of patients and wounded to receive treatment,” the joint statement said.

The first stage also includes “intensifying the safe and effective entry and distribution of humanitarian aid on a large scale throughout the Gaza Strip, rehabilitating hospitals, health centers, and bakeries, bringing in civil defense supplies and fuel, and bringing in shelter supplies for displaced persons who lost their homes due to the war,” the statement added.

The mediators from the three countries will work jointly “to help ensure that all three of its stages will be fully implemented by both parties,” it said.

Palestinians in Gaza City are expressing both happiness and grief following the deal’s announcement.

“I’m so happy. But at the same time, my home was destroyed, I lost four of my children. Some of my other children I haven’t seen in months,” Beit Lahiya resident Jawhar Abi Laila said. “I hope I can see my children happy and well.”

“We suffered and are exhausted, but we survived,” she said, adding that she would be returning home with a broken heart.

An unnamed Palestinian man said he is “filled with hope and pain” at the news of the deal.

“Pain for all that we’ve lost, for our loved ones and friends and family and neighbors. And hope for the return of Gaza, for the return of our homes,” he said.

Another unnamed person who was displaced from Shujaya said, “we are happy but it’s incomplete happiness.”

“I lost my father and my sister. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu was the reason for this war. Where are we going to live now? It’s been a year since I’ve been home,” the person said, adding that they hope food and aid arrive.

Mahmoud Basal, Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson also acknowledged the loss the war has brought in the Palestinian enclave.

“We’ve been waiting for this for long months, to stop the spilling of blood that has been constant in Gaza since the 7th of October until now,” Basal said. “We have been waiting this moment for a very long time and we hope the world will see it through.”

The United States hopes to get more than 500 trucks a day of humanitarian aid into Gaza during the ceasefire, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Wednesday.

“The critical thing that we believe the ceasefire unlocks is a real solution to that last mile distribution problem that we have had, that humanitarian organizations have had in Gaza,” Miller said at a press briefing.

Miller noted that it has been “very difficult” to distribute aid within Gaza because of the security situation. He said, “aid will be distributed through our humanitarian partners, largely the UN agencies that are there on the ground and other nonprofit, non-governmental organizations.”

“There are broad agreements that we have worked out with some of the humanitarian partners,” Miller said, adding that there are other details that have to be worked out. He confirmed the Thursday meeting in Cairo, which CNN reported earlier Wednesday.

Asked if there will be any reconstruction done to assist with the aid distribution, given the level of destruction within Gaza, Miller said that the first phase of the ceasefire is “really just a stabilization and recovery before you can even get to reconstruction.”

Miller acknowledged that a lot of humanitarian infrastructure has been destroyed, but said that “there are still warehouses that exist in Gaza.”

“Some of the warehouses that exist haven’t been destroyed, but aid organizations haven’t been able to get to them because of the security situation,” he said. “We think they’ll be able to turn those warehouses back on, we believe they’ll be able to surge the number of trucks that go in and the number of trucks that move around.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says the ceasefire-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas needs to allow for a major increase in aid to Gaza.

The group’s Secretary General Jan Egeland called on Israel to immediately lift all restrictions on aid and aid agencies “to avert famine-like conditions and ensure access to shelter, food, and medical care for all in need.”

The group also called on Hamas and other armed groups to release hostages without delay.

The NRC drew attention to the mass destruction in Gaza and the need to repair and rebuild homes, schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. The group also called on Israel’s allies to make sure it keeps border crossings open to allow the inflow of aid.

The group said its teams on the ground stand ready to “scale up our efforts, helping families begin the long process of rebuilding their lives.”

Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim has shared a document detailing how the ceasefire-for-hostages agreement between Israel and Hamas will be implemented.

According to the document, Israel will release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners who were arrested on October 8, 2023, but were not involved in Hamas’ attack on Israel the day before.

Of the 33 hostages Hamas is expected to release, nine who are ill and injured will be exchanged for 110 Palestinian prisoners with life sentences, according to the document.

Under phase one of the deal, Israeli forces will gradually reduce their presence along the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land along the Egypt-Gaza border, and begin withdrawing after the last of the 33 hostages is released. Its forces will complete their withdrawal by day 50, under phase two of the deal, according to the document.

It also says Israel will work on getting the Rafah border crossing ready as soon as the agreement is signed to facilitate the return of displaced civilians. On the seventh day after the deal takes effect, unarmed pedestrians will be allowed to return to the north, without undergoing inspection, while vehicles will be able to return after being inspected by a third party.

Egypt, one of the mediators of the deal, confirmed the authenticity of the document.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has characterized the ceasefire-for-hostages deal as a painful choice “between bad and very bad” – without saying explicitly whether he will vote for it or not.

“I’ll speak honestly – this is a difficult decision when it involves releasing so many terrorists, including those who have murdered Jews,” Sa’ar said during a speech at a synagogue in Rome on Wednesday.

“There are also other painful elements in the deal. We must choose between bad and very bad.”

The current deal is expected to release 33 hostages in its first phase in exchange for hundreds of prisoners currently held by Israel.

But it still needs to gain approval from the security cabinet, and then the full government cabinet will need to pass it by a simple majority vote, a senior Israeli source told CNN on Monday. At least one member of Netanyahu’s cabinet, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has indicated he will not vote for the deal as it currently stands.

“If we delay the decision – who knows how many will remain alive?” Sa’ar continued, according to a copy of his remarks released by Israel’s foreign ministry and obtained by CNN. “It is painful – for the victims of terrorism and for all the citizens of Israel.”

“We have a responsibility to the citizens who were abducted from their beds,” Sa’ar concluded. “The commitment of the Israeli government to bring them home – that is what will guide us in these difficult circumstances.”

US Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated the news of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, writing in a statement that she is “grateful for the work of US officials whose diligent diplomacy allowed us to arrive at this significant moment.”

Harris said she and Biden “have no higher priority than the safety of Americans, and are determined that all the American hostages be returned home as part of this deal.”

She acknowledged there is “more work to be done” before peace can be achieved in the region, but added: “I believe this agreement can be the foundation on which we build toward a two-state solution that creates a more peaceful future for Israeli and Palestinian people.”