A four-day cease-fire in Gaza be­tween Is­rael and Hamas will be­gin Fri­day morn­ing, Qatar said, a day lat­er than orig­i­nal­ly an­nounced, as ne­go­tia­tors worked out fi­nal de­tails of the deal, which is to lead to the re­lease of dozens of hostages held by mil­i­tants and Pales­tini­ans im­pris­oned by Is­rael.

The diplo­mat­ic break­through promised some re­lief for the 2.3 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans in Gaza who have en­dured weeks of Is­raeli bom­bard­ment, as well as fam­i­lies in Is­rael fear­ful for the fate of their loved ones tak­en cap­tive dur­ing Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack that trig­gered the war.

The cease-fire was orig­i­nal­ly set to be­gin Thurs­day morn­ing, but it ap­peared to hit a snag the night be­fore when Is­rael’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er, Tzachi Haneg­bi, an­nounced a one-day de­lay with­out pro­vid­ing a rea­son.

He said the two sides had ex­changed lists of those to be re­leased, and the first group of 13 women and chil­dren held by Hamas would be freed Fri­day af­ter­noon. He did not say how many Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers would be freed, but of­fi­cials have said three would be freed for every hostage.

In­creased aid for Pales­tini­ans will start to en­ter Gaza “as soon as pos­si­ble,” al-Ansari said. The hope is that the “mo­men­tum” from this deal will lead to an “end to this vi­o­lence,” he told re­porters.

RIS­ING TOLL IN GAZA

The Health Min­istry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, mean­while, re­sumed its de­tailed count of Pales­tin­ian ca­su­al­ties from the war, say­ing over 13,300 have been killed. The new num­bers were not ful­ly bro­ken down, but women and mi­nors have con­sis­tent­ly made up around two-thirds of the dead in past tal­lies.

The fig­ures do not in­clude up­dat­ed num­bers from hos­pi­tals in the north, where ser­vices and com­mu­ni­ca­tion large­ly broke down ear­li­er this month. The min­istry says some 6,000 peo­ple have been re­port­ed miss­ing, feared buried un­der rub­ble.

The min­istry does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and mil­i­tants in its death tolls. Is­rael says it has killed thou­sands of Hamas fight­ers, with­out pre­sent­ing ev­i­dence for its count.

The min­istry had stopped pub­lish­ing ca­su­al­ty counts as of Nov. 11, say­ing it had lost the abil­i­ty to do so be­cause of the col­lapse of the health sec­tor in the north.

NE­TANYAHU SAYS TRUCE WON’T END WAR

The truce agree­ment raised hopes of even­tu­al­ly wind­ing down the war, which has lev­eled vast swaths of Gaza, fu­eled a surge of vi­o­lence in the oc­cu­pied West Bank and stirred fears of a wider con­fla­gra­tion across the Mid­dle East.

Air-raid sirens sound­ed across north­ern Is­rael on Thurs­day as Hezbol­lah said it fired 48 Katyusha rock­ets from south­ern Lebanon. The bar­rage came af­ter an Is­raeli strike killed five Hezbol­lah fight­ers, in­clud­ing the son of the head of the group’s par­lia­men­tary bloc.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said it was strik­ing the sources of the launch­es. Is­rael and Hezbol­lah, which fought a month­long war in 2006, have re­peat­ed­ly trad­ed fire across the bor­der since the war in Gaza broke out.

Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu vowed to con­tin­ue the war af­ter the truce ex­pires to de­stroy Hamas’ mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties, end its 16-year rule in Gaza and re­turn all the es­ti­mat­ed 240 cap­tives held in Gaza by Hamas and oth­er groups.

“We will con­tin­ue it un­til we achieve all our goals,” Ne­tanyahu said, adding that he had de­liv­ered the same mes­sage in a phone call to U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. Wash­ing­ton has pro­vid­ed ex­ten­sive mil­i­tary and diplo­mat­ic sup­port to Is­rael since the start of the war.

The de­lay in im­ple­ment­ing the cease-fire dis­mayed up­root­ed Pales­tini­ans in Gaza, who hope to use the few days of qui­et to vis­it homes they had fled — or at least the wreck­age of them — and re­con­nect with fam­i­lies. More than 1.7 mil­lion peo­ple, three-fourths of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion, have been dis­placed in the war.

“We’d been wait­ing and hop­ing since yes­ter­day,” said Aya Hamad, who is shel­ter­ing at a hos­pi­tal in the cen­tral city of Deir al Bal­ah. “We want­ed to go home to get a change of clothes for our chil­dren, even though we know our homes have been bombed … It’s all for noth­ing.”

Is­raeli troops hold much of north­ern Gaza and say they have dis­man­tled tun­nels and much of Hamas’ in­fra­struc­ture there. Is­raeli forces Wednes­day re­vealed what they said was a ma­jor Hamas hide­out in a tun­nel be­neath Gaza City’s Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal.

The ter­ri­to­ry’s largest med­ical cen­ter has been at the heart of a fierce bat­tle of nar­ra­tives over both sides’ al­leged­ly reck­less en­dan­ger­ment of civil­ians. Hamas and hos­pi­tal staff de­ny Is­raeli al­le­ga­tions that Shi­fa was used as a mil­i­tant com­mand cen­ter.

The mil­i­tary said Thurs­day it de­tained Shi­fa’s di­rec­tor, Mo­hammed Abu Selmia, for ques­tion­ing over his in­volve­ment in what it called “ex­ten­sive” Hamas ac­tiv­i­ties in the hos­pi­tal. Gaza’s Health Min­istry called on in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies to in­ter­vene and said it would no longer co­op­er­ate with the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion in evac­u­at­ing hos­pi­tals.

Ear­li­er Thurs­day, Is­rael or­dered the full evac­u­a­tion of the In­done­sian Hos­pi­tal in the north, Dr. Mu­nir al-Boursh, a Health Min­istry of­fi­cial in­side the fa­cil­i­ty, told Al Jazeera.

Fight­ing has raged out­side the hos­pi­tal for days, and hun­dreds of peo­ple have al­ready been evac­u­at­ed to the south. It was un­clear if the ar­rest of Abu Selmia would af­fect those ef­forts.

Is­raeli mil­i­tary spokesman Col. Richard Hecht said com­bat op­er­a­tions would con­tin­ue “un­til we are giv­en the or­der to hold our fire.”

Is­raeli troops have sur­round­ed the Ja­baliya refugee camp and called on any res­i­dents in­side to evac­u­ate dur­ing a three-hour win­dow Thurs­day, he said. The mil­i­tary has said it is pur­su­ing Hamas fight­ers in Ja­baliya, a dense ur­ban dis­trict ad­ja­cent to Gaza City that has come un­der in­tense bom­bard­ment for weeks.

Is­rael has threat­ened to ex­tend its in­va­sion to south­ern Gaza, where most of the ter­ri­to­ry’s pop­u­la­tion is now lo­cat­ed. More than 1 mil­lion peo­ple, in­clud­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands who fled the north, have crammed in­to over­flow­ing U.N.-run shel­ters with dwin­dling food, wa­ter and ba­sic sup­plies.

For Hamas, the cease-fire would pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­group af­ter weeks of ap­par­ent­ly heavy loss­es. Hamas leader Yehya Sin­war, who is be­lieved to be alive and in hid­ing in Gaza, is like­ly to claim the re­lease of Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers as a ma­jor achieve­ment and de­clare vic­to­ry if the war ends.

HOSTAGES TO BE FREED IN STAGES

Un­der the truce deal, 50 hostages are sup­posed to be freed in stages, in ex­change for the re­lease of what Hamas said would be 150 Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers. Women and chil­dren would be re­leased first, and Is­rael said the truce would be ex­tend­ed an ex­tra day for every ad­di­tion­al 10 hostages freed.

The re­turn of hostages could lift spir­its in Is­rael, where their plight has gripped the coun­try. Fam­i­lies of the hostages have staged mass demon­stra­tions to pres­sure the gov­ern­ment to bring them home. Ne­tanyahu’s of­fice said it no­ti­fied the fam­i­lies of hostages list­ed for re­lease Fri­day.

Hamas said 200 trucks a day will en­ter Gaza car­ry­ing aid. Qatar said the aid will in­clude fu­el, but has giv­en no de­tails on quan­ti­ties.

Is­rael cut off all im­ports at the start of the war, ex­cept for a trick­le of food, wa­ter and med­ical sup­plies al­lowed in from Egypt. The lack of fu­el has caused a ter­ri­to­ry-wide black­out, leav­ing homes and hos­pi­tals re­liant on fal­ter­ing gen­er­a­tors.

Is­rael’s Jus­tice Min­istry pub­lished a list of 300 pris­on­ers el­i­gi­ble to be re­leased, main­ly teenagers de­tained over the past year for rock-throw­ing and oth­er mi­nor of­fens­es.

The war erupt­ed when sev­er­al thou­sand Hamas mil­i­tants stormed in­to south­ern Is­rael, killing at least 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and tak­ing scores of hostages, in­clud­ing ba­bies, women and old­er adults, as well as sol­diers, for whom Hamas is ex­pect­ed to de­mand a large num­ber of high-pro­file pris­on­ers.

Chehayeb re­port­ed from Beirut. As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Na­jib Jobain in Khan You­nis, Gaza Strip, Melanie Lid­man in Jerusalem and Jon Gam­brell in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, con­tributed.

DEIR AL-BAL­AH, Gaza Strip (AP) —