On Thursday, shortly after 1 A.M. in Israel, a sleepy screening of documentaries by recent film graduates on Channel 12 was interrupted by breaking news. An anchor announced that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas had just been reached. The broadcast cut to the White House; footage showed President Donald Trump holding a roundtable event with conservative influencers, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio handed him a slip of paper.

It was a handwritten note, caught by the Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, that said “very close.” Both words were underlined. “We need you to approve a Truth Social post soon so you can announce deal first,” the message went on. Not long after, it was official. “This is the post we’ve likely all been waiting for,” the Israeli anchor said. She went on to read, in Hebrew, Trump’s statement: “I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan,” it began. “This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace.”

News of a ceasefire had been expected ever since Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, held a joint press conference last week to announce their support for a White House proposal to end the war, and Hamas responded in a way that was marketed by Trump as a yes. But now it was official: the hostages would return home on Monday. It was as though Israelis drew in a collective breath and then exhaled. At the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which had been rebranded as Hostages Square, late-night scenes of unimpeded joy erupted. Families of hostages, who have until now been restrained in their public reactions to a prospective agreement, allowed themselves to break down in tears of relief.

Einav Zangauker and Anat Angrest, whose two sons—both named Matan—are in captivity in Gaza, held each other in a long embrace. “Matan and Matan are coming home!” Angrest cried out. Zangauker, who has become a symbol of the families’ long fight for the release of their loved ones, smiled warily. “Are there instructions for how to welcome your child after two years in captivity?” she asked, according to Haaretz.

Michel Illouz, whose son had been killed while being held by Hamas, approached Zangauker and lifted her in the air. To see the jubilation of both parents—one whose son is alive and will be home soon, the other whose son is expected to return in a body bag—was to witness the full spectrum of emotions felt by Israelis in the past two years: hope coexisting with grief, and the terrible sense that much of the bloodshed could have been prevented. A similar deal had been on the table months ago. What began with the worst attack on Israeli soil in the country’s history—when Hamas killed twelve hundred Israelis and took more than two hundred hostages on October 7, 2023—has led to a gruesome war. The death toll in Gaza has surpassed sixty-seven thousand, with the enclave so ravaged that Israel has become something of an international pariah. For Israelis, the overwhelming sense is that their country has become ever more isolated on the world stage, even as its people remain in mourning. More than nine hundred Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza, and large numbers of the Army’s almost three hundred thousand reservists have been called up repeatedly for duty. Army suicide rates have been rising, too; sixteen soldiers have died that way this year, nearly half of them serving in reserve duty.

Before dawn on Thursday, scenes of relief and celebration began streaming in from Gaza. A group of Palestinian toddlers, standing barefoot outside their makeshift tents, jumped up and down, crying out “Hudna!”—“Truce!” In the streets of Khan Younis, dozens of men huddled around a single television, whistling and cheering. The Israeli military has now begun its retreat out of Gaza City, and vacated the Netzarim Corridor, which had cleaved Gaza in two, between north and south.

For the first time, delegations of both Israeli and Hamas officials apparently sat down in the same room, a ballroom in the Egyptian coastal town of Sharm el-Sheikh, to hash out the details of the agreement. Images also emerged showing the Israeli representative on the hostage issue, the retired general Nitzan Alon, smiling and shaking hands with Qatar’s Prime Minister, Mohammed al-Thani, just weeks after Israel attempted to assassinate top Hamas officials on Qatari soil.

Despite the handshakes, however, many obstacles remain unaddressed. In particular, there is still uncertainty on the issue of who will govern postwar Gaza and whether Hamas will agree to disarm. The timeline of an Israeli withdrawal and its extent also remains to be seen. Also left unanswered for now is the identity of some of the so-called “heavy” Palestinian prisoners whom Israel has promised to release in exchange for the hostages. The number of Palestinian prisoners to be freed by Israel has already been agreed on—some two hundred and fifty prisoners, and seventeen hundred Palestinians whom Israel has detained after Hamas’s October 7th attacks. But it remains unclear whether, for example, Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the Tanzim militia of Fatah, who is widely seen by Palestinians as a symbol of resistance and a potential leader who can unite both Fatah and Hamas, will be released. Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will not free him, but the pressing timetable is such that many red lines on both sides will likely be breached.

The ceasefire agreement is a crowning achievement for Trump, who appears to have timed it specifically to precede the announcement, on Friday, of the Nobel Peace Prize recipient—a long obsession of his. For Netanyahu, who up to this point has resisted an agreement to free all the hostages and end the war, the ceasefire deal marks an about-face. The political ramifications for him are still unknown. Although a majority of the Israeli public had been pushing for a hostage-and-ceasefire deal, Netanyahu’s extremist coalition partners have threatened to topple his government if the war ended and the Israeli military withdrew entirely from Gaza. Shortly after the agreement was announced, Trump called into Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News and said that he had just spoken to Netanyahu. “He said, ‘I can’t believe it. Everybody is liking me now,’ ” Trump said, of Netanyahu, in an account that is not likely to be appreciated by the Israeli premier. “I said, ‘More importantly, they are loving Israel again,’ and they really are. I said, ‘Israel cannot fight the world, Bibi. They cannot fight the world.’ ”