JERUSALEM — War-shattered families in Israel and Gaza woke to a hopeful-but-agonizing limbo Wednesday after the early-hours approval of a deal between Israel and Hamas to pause fighting and exchange captives. The agreement allows the release of at least 50 Israeli hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners during a four-day pause of combat operations in Gaza.

Israeli National Security Council Director Tzachi Hanegbi said the releases would not begin before Friday.

While Israel’s Supreme Court reviewed the deal Wednesday, fighting continued for a 47th day. Bombs fell across the Gaza Strip while family members of hostages agonized over whether the longed-for day of release would include their particular loved ones.

“I am excited and hope that it will be my family,” said Romina Shvalb, whose sister, brother-in-law and their two daughters are believed to be among the 240 abducted when Hamas fighters raided several Israeli towns on Oct. 7.

“On the other hand, there are other hostages,” she said. “The other day I had to pull the car off the road because I was having an anxiety attack.”

Hamas told Egyptian media that the four-day pause would commence Thursday at 10 a.m. local time; Israeli officials declined to comment.

The hostages will not be released in a single group, Israeli and U.S. officials said, and they are likely to be transferred to the International Committee of the Red Cross in small numbers.

For each hostage returned to Israel, the country will release three Palestinians — women or teenagers — it now holds in its prisons. Israel has said it could extend the pause in bombing by a day for every additional 10 hostages who are released after the initial group of 50.

Israel will allow more fuel and humanitarian aid — up to 300 trucks a day, according to one aid official — into Gaza during the pause, U.S. officials said. An Israeli military official said conditions would not permit any of the hundreds of thousands of displaced from heavily bombed northern Gaza to return to the area.

U.S. officials said they hoped the agreement would shift the dynamic of the war and perhaps lead to a broader cease-fire. Israel had for weeks refused to slow its military assault despite entreaties from allies, hostage families and humanitarian agencies in Gaza.

But even as Israelis celebrated the release of at least some hostages, military and political leaders insisted that the pause did not mean peace.

“We are at war, and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals: to destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that nobody in Gaza can threaten Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a recorded statement released during the cabinet debate on the deal.

Israel’s emergency government approved the deal after weeks of insisting that no pause in fighting was possible until Hamas released the hostages seized in Israel. The cabinet rejected a deal more than a week ago that was, according to media reports, similar to this one.

The back-and-forth reflected a broader debate among Israelis who support the military mission of eradicating Hamas but yearn to have the hostages released.

Right-wing politicians opposed any pause in the fighting, saying the top priority should be destroying the organization that on Oct. 7 unleashed the deadliest single attack in Israel’s history. But the scale was tipped by mounting pressure from the hostage families, the White House and rising public support for bringing at least some of the captives home, and even several far-right Israeli government ministers voted to approve the deal.

Six hospitals in Israel readied special units of pediatricians and mental health counselors to receive the hostages. The hostages and their families are to be housed in isolated, dedicated facilities and the hospitals would be barred from releasing information or photographs to the public, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health. Social workers are to accompany the children from the moment of their release.

Qatari officials, who mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas, expressed hope that the deal would lead to a longer period of calm and, eventually, to peace talks. The terms provide for additional military pauses if Hamas releases more hostages.

“The important thing is that we managed to produce a formula that will carry momentum,” said Majed al-Ansari, an adviser to the Qatari prime minister and a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During the pause, Hamas fighters on the ground in Gaza are expected to locate and identify more of the hostages in the territory, according to Ansari. Some hostages are believed to be held by fighters affiliated with other militant groups, local gang members and individuals. Hamas has said that some hostages were killed as Israeli operations escalated in Gaza, but verifying that information has so far been impossible.

The final legal steps of enacting the agreement began Wednesday with the publication of a list of about 300 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons. Israeli law allows citizens who have been victims of militant attacks to challenge the release of prisoners before the Supreme Court. At least one advocacy group, the Almagor Terror Victims Association, filed a petition Wednesday to block the deal, according to Israeli media.

The court rejected the appeal Wednesday evening. The jurists have never previously blocked a prisoner release deal.

The number of Palestinians held by Israel has swelled in the weeks since the start of the conflict. Most have been swept up in Israeli raids in the West Bank. Those potentially eligible for release under the deal include about 200 teenage boys and 75 women, according to a Palestinian human rights group.

In the hours before the pause was to begin, there was no sign in Gaza of a letup in violence. Bombs in northern Gaza killed dozens, witnesses said. A resident of Jabalya refugee camp told The Washington Post that the injured were being rushed to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, one of the last remaining accessible health-care facilities in the north.

Munir al-Bursh, the director general of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, said in a voice message from inside the besieged Indonesian Hospital that staffers were trying to evacuate patients through smoke and tear gas.

Officials in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis transferred dozens of blue body bags from a truck into a shallow cemetery trench as a bulldozer stood ready to fill in one of the increasing number of mass graves. The 110 bodies, some of them badly decomposed, had been taken by Israeli forces when they gained control of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City more than a week ago, and they were just returned to the Ministry of Health, according to Mohammed al-Najjar of Gaza’s Religious Affairs Ministry.

Al-Najjar said the bodies had not been identified. He said they had to be buried in a mass grave to accommodate their number and because of the fear of continued bombardment.

Sirens blared in southern Israel as militants fired rockets out of Gaza in the hours before the expected break in fighting.

Pope Francis on Wednesday described the fighting as “terrorism” and as a struggle that has “gone beyond war.” Francis spoke after meetings with family members of Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

“I heard how both sides suffer, and this is what wars do, but here we’ve gone beyond war,” Francis said. “This is terrorism. Please, let us move forward to peace. Pray for peace.”

It was unclear whether he was referring to specific actions or the overall conflict. The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

Leaders around the world expressed hope that the deal would break the spasm of violence that began when Hamas and allied fighters killed more than 1,200 people in Israel six weeks ago. More than 11,100 Palestinians had been killed in the Israeli military operation as of Nov. 10, when the Gaza Health Ministry said it could no longer keep an accurate tally. The ministry has estimated that 2,000 more have since died.

Balousha reported from Amman, Jordan, and George from Doha, Qatar. Claire Parker and Louisa Loveluck in Jerusalem and Naomi Schanen in London contributed to this report.

previous coverage

• How pressure from hostage families nudged Israel toward a deal
• Israel-Hamas deal hinged on proof-of-life evidence, Qatar Sheikh

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