Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement that could see the first pause the six-week air and ground assault on Gaza in response to the Palestinian militant group’s cross-border attack on Oct. 7. The deal will involve the release of a significant number of hostages, including women and children, held captive in the Gaza Strip, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

The deal comes after weeks of growing global pressure and complicated international negotiations, involving the Biden administration and Qatar, which has served as a mediator — as neither Israel nor the United States speaks directly to Hamas.

President Biden in a statement late Tuesday thanked Qatari leader Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi’s “critical leadership and partnership in reaching this deal.”

He expressed appreciation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for supporting a four-day pause in fighting while the exchange proceeds. “I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented,” Biden said. Of the remaining hostages, he said, “I will not stop until they are all released.”

Here’s what we know:

1. Some hostages in Gaza to be exchanged for prisoners in Israel

The Israeli government said in a statement that the deal, announced Wednesday, would entail at least a four-day pause in the fighting. During that time, at least 50 hostages — women and children — held by Hamas would be returned.

Each hostage will be exchanged for three Palestinians — women or children — held in Israeli prisons. Israel’s Department of Justice released a list early Wednesday local time of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel who could be released under the deal that Hamas confirmed in a statement Wednesday would include the release of 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

Israel’s list contains 300 names, allowing for the possibility that more prisoners and hostages could be exchanged after the initial agreement. The youngest on the list is 14 years old.

Hamas is expected to turn over hostages inside Gaza to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who will then escort them to Israeli border crossings.

Leaders and lawmakers around the world have welcomed the pause. Biden said in a statement that the deal “should bring home additional American hostages.” Three Americans — two women and a girl — are expected to be released under the present agreement, a senior Biden administration official told The Washington Post.

Until now, only four hostages have been freed by Hamas since the conflict began, including an American mother and daughter. During the operation to free those U.S. citizens, Israel stopped firing on a specific area of Gaza for several hours, and the ICRC took custody of the hostages and brought them across the border to Israel.

2. The deal could be a template for expanded exchanges

Israel called the agreement the “first stage” to achieve its goal of being able to “return home all of the hostages.” Israeli officials have said about 240 hostages, including Americans, were taken by Palestinian groups in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. Israel has said that those hostages are mostly being held in a network of tunnels underneath Gaza, complicating efforts to fight Hamas.

The hope is that if the template for the release of hostages works, it could be used to release more hostages in future deals, with Palestinian prisoners held in Israel also released.

Israel will also allow more fuel and humanitarian aid into the enclave, and the pause could be extended by a day for every additional 10 hostages who are released above the initial group of 50, officials said.

3. There will be a temporary pause in fighting

Negotiators had previously called for a five-day pause, though Israel had pushed back against the length of the pause and emphasized that the fighting would continue after the window, with no withdrawal of troops. “We’re talking about a pause in the fighting for a few days,” Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Under the terms of the deal, Israel will cease military activity “in all regions of the Gaza Strip” for four days, and hundreds of trucks for humanitarian relief, medical and fuel aid will be allowed in, Hamas said.

More than 11,100 people have since been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which said on Nov. 10 that it could no longer provide an updated count because of the intensity of fighting in the enclave and repeated communication breakdowns. The ministry estimates at least 2,000 more could be dead. Hamas’s attack on Israel killed at least 1,200 people.

4. It would be a pause, not a cease-fire

More than 100 countries have called for a full cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, with the term becoming a rallying cry for critics of the war. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres has repeatedly called for “a humanitarian cease-fire.”

However, the expected deal has been described not as a cease-fire but as a temporary “pause,” as proposed by Israeli officials and the United States.

Though neither term has a set meaning under international law, Israel and the United States have emphasized that the difference is that a pause has a more limited scope and a set time limit, while a cease-fire is aimed toward reaching a long-term cessation of hostilities.

While Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq said in a statement Tuesday that a “truce” deal was imminent, Israeli and U.S. officials have not used that term, with the expectation that hostilities would pause rather than cease.

In a statement announcing the deal, the Israeli government said it, along with the Israel Defense Forces and security services “will continue the war” to ensure the return of all hostages and “complete the elimination of Hamas.”Hamas has also pledged to continue to fight until Israel is defeated.

5. There could be potential problems

The terms of the deal have not yet begun. Qatar said the starting time of the “pause” will be announced within the next 24 hours and can be extended. Israeli leaders also said they do not intend to start the pause in hostilities for at least 24 hours to give the Israeli Supreme Court time for deliberations and appeals about the deal, an Israeli official familiar with the plans told The Post, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal discussions.

Another issue is that Hamas has also indicated that it does not have full control of all of the hostages held in Gaza - with smaller militant groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad potentially in control of some hostages - and it has claimed that some of those held captive have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Sarah Dadouch, Steve Hendrix, Hajar Harb, Michael Birnbaum, Liz Sly, Paul Schemm, Niha Masih, Frances Vinall, Karen DeYoung and John Hudson contributed to this report.

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