BREAKING: Hamas Reportedly Accepts Ceasefire Agreement

Hamas announced on Monday through its political bureau that is has accepted a ceasefire agreement through its Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

According to CNN, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau reportedly “made a phone call to the Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and to the Egyptian Minister of Intelligence, Mr. Abbas Kamel, and informed them of Hamas’ agreement to their proposal regarding a ceasefire agreement.”

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond told anchor Dana Bash that Israel has not yet responded and had more details about the deal Hamas agreed to:

[T]his could be a tremendously significant moment for so many people, for the millions of people in Gaza who have been suffering during the course of this seven-month war, for the families of the hostages who have been waiting for an opportunity to get their loved ones out of Gaza, to be able to embrace those loved ones for the first time.

But I do want to caveat this news with the fact that we are only at this point hearing from Hamas. We have yet to hear from the mediators from the United States or from the Israeli government. But Hamas did just release a statement on their official telegram channel saying that Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, has made a phone call to the Qatari Prime Minister as well as to the Egyptian Minister of Intelligence, Abbas Kamel, and “informed them of Hamas’ agreement to their proposal regarding a ceasefire agreement.”

Now, as we understand it, there has been this latest Egyptian framework on the table which could see the release of between 20 to 33 Israeli hostages over several weeks, that there would be a weeks-long pause in the fighting during that time, and that ultimately this would lead to a much longer-term ceasefire, perhaps as long as a year, perhaps even longer. And that is the proposal that was on the table. The Israelis had made a number of concessions in this that they previously had not agreed to including allowing unrestricted return of Palestinians to northern Gaza. But this is a framework proposal. And our understanding was that if Hamas agreed to this, there would still be several more days, at least, of negotiations in order to get to a final deal.

So it appears that Hamas here has agreed to the framework that the Egyptians had put on the table. It’s not clear whether any changes have been made to that framework since it was first presented to Hamas over the weekend. And so those are the kinds of details that are going to be really crucial to determining whether or not this is something that Israel can agree to, and whether it can actually lead to a final deal.

Watch the video above via CNN.

This story has been updated.