Israel and Hamas made a new – the fifth in a row – exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners as part of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.

According to what the parties announced, three Israelis and 183 Palestinians were to be released.

There had been doubts, but they were finally ended last Friday night, about whether the project would go ahead, following the shock of the plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday for the US to “take control” of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli government and the Forum of Families have confirmed that Or Levi, 34, Eli Sarabi, 52, and Israeli-German Ochad Ben Ami, 56, will be released after sixteen months in captivity in the Gaza Strip.

For its part, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said that the release of 183 inmates in Israeli detention centers is planned. These are 18 prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment, 54 prisoners sentenced to heavy sentences and 111 prisoners arrested in Gaza after October 7 2023.

Eli Sarabi’s wife Elie Sarabi and their two teenage daughters were killed in their home in kibbutz Beeri, southern Israel, when the Palestinian Islamist movement raided southern sectors of Israeli territory. Yossi Sarabi, his older brother, who was kidnapped separately, is presumed dead by the Israeli army.

Or Levi’s wife, Einav, was killed during an attack by members of Hamas at the Nova music festival where the couple had gone.

Ohad Ben Ami’s wife, who was kidnapped with him in kibbutz Beeri, was released during the first week-long ceasefire in November 2023.

Today’s will bring to five the number of exchanges of this kind since a ceasefire agreement went into effect in the Gaza Strip on January 19, after 15 months of war triggered by an unprecedented Hamas offensive.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu will follow the process from the United States, where he has been continuing his visit since Monday, according to his office.

As of today, 18 Israeli hostages had been released in exchange for some 582 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, as well as an Egyptian national.

During the first phase of the six-week deal, 33 Israeli hostages were to be released in exchange for the release of 1,900 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention centres; the remaining Israeli hostages, living and dead, are to be repatriated in the next two phases.

In Israel there is particular concern about the fate of three hostages, Shiri Biba and her two sons Ariel and Kfar, who would have been five and two years old today, the youngest hostages. Hamas has announced that they were killed, which Israeli authorities have not confirmed. Yarden Bibas, the husband and father who was released in Gaza on February 1, pleaded yesterday with Prime Minister Netanyahu to bring them back to Israel.

Of the 251 people abducted during the October 7 attack, 76 remain in the Gaza Strip, but 34 have been declared dead by the Israeli army.

The second phase of the deal, still being negotiated, will allow for the release of the last hostages and a definitive end to the war. The third and final one – if there is one – will be dedicated to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

The continuation of the process remains uncertain after US President Trump’s shock announcement that he plans to bring the Gaza Strip under US control and its population outside the enclave, for example to Egypt or Jordan, for reconstruction, thereby turning it into a “Middle East’s Blue Coast”.

After insisting the day before yesterday that he was touting that plan, yesterday Friday the US president said he was “in no hurry.”

Aman and Cairo rejected the idea, which sparked an international outcry. The UN warned against any “national cleansing.”

Also, the plan was condemned by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

Despite international outcry, Israel announced the day before yesterday (Thursday) that it had begun drawing up a plan for the “voluntary” withdrawal of Gazans from the besieged enclave, where they are currently banned from leaving.

Hamas’ assault on the southern part of Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians, according to a French Agency count based on official Israeli data.

Widescale Israeli military retaliatory operations in the Gaza Strip have since resulted in the deaths of at least 47,583 people, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s health ministry, described as reliable by the UN.