Qatar on Saturday announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas to take effect the next day, kicking off the final preparations for a deal the world hopes will end 15 months of violence in Gaza.

The agreement is due to enter into force at 8:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, said Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, which has spent months with the United States and Egypt struggling to reach an agreement.

The Israeli government approved the deal on Saturday morning after hours of negotiations and amid internal disputes in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. The agreement cleared a final hurdle, bringing hope to Israelis who want to see their loved ones return and Gazans who have survived the 21st century’s worst bombings.

“It’s a mixture of joy, sadness and longing for a new beginning,” said Mariam Moeen Awwad, 23, who has been displaced from her home in northern Gaza six times since the war began.

Mrs. Awad planned to move into the house she had just acquired with her husband in November 2023. The war interrupted those plans, and the family lived in crowded areas and wanted to return home, she said, “if it’s still there.”

In Israel, the authorities are preparing to receive more hostages, not knowing whether they will return malnourished, depressed or dead.

In his first statement since agreeing to the ceasefire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday night that 33 hostages had been released in the first phase of the agreement, “most of them alive.”

Defending the deal, he also wrote that Israel had made significant gains in the past few months, including killing senior Hamas leaders. “As I promised you – we have changed the face of the Middle East,” he said.

Three reception centers have been set up to receive the hostages along the Gaza border, according to an Israeli military official. These will work with the Israeli army, as well as doctors and psychologists, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The release of the hostages is expected to be the first such large-scale exchange since the end of the week at the beginning of the war.

“Those who were released at that time were already fed,” said Mr. Hagar Mizrahi, head of the Ministry of Health in Israel, about those who were released during the peace of 2023. “Just imagine their situation now, after another 400 days. We are very worried about this. “

Of the women, elderly men and other hostages who are due to be returned, many are believed to have been held in a Hamas prison in Gaza, under conditions that can leave physical and psychological scars. Israeli hospitals are preparing remote areas where the hostages can begin their recovery in private.

“Last time, we saw the Red Cross moving the hostages, and some of them were running to relatives, hugging them,” said Einat Yehene, a psychologist who works with the Hostage Families Forum, a support group. “It will not be easy and the same this time, because of the physical condition and the feeling we are expecting.”

In the meantime, these issues are still being discussed in Palestine. The total number of prisoners to be released and their identities were among the most contentious issues included in the deal talks.

The new agreement also calls for allowing 600 aid trucks to enter Gaza daily and to negotiate a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area and a ceasefire.

These negotiations are bound to be painful and difficult, just like the months of negotiations that produced this week’s agreement. Mr Netanyahu is already facing internal unrest within his coalition, which his right-wing allies have threatened to quit over opposition to the deal.

They have called for the war to continue to end Hamas, which led an attack on Israel in October 2023 that killed nearly 1,200 people, wounded another 250 and started the war.

Mr. Netanyahu is also facing pressure from many Israelis who want all hostages to return, as well as from the outgoing US president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the president-elect, Donald J. Trump, who both want the war to end.

In his speech, Mr. Netanyahu said the agreement protects Israel’s right to return to the war against Hamas if it so chooses. The agreement also allows Israeli soldiers to be stationed in protected areas along the Israeli-Gaza border and the Gaza-Egyptian border, he added, especially during the first phase.

“If we have to go back to war, we will do it in new ways and with more force,” he said.

Some doubts about the deal’s success stem from the chaos and destruction inside Gaza, where thousands of people have been killed since the war began and hundreds of thousands more are without homes, clean water or ready-made food or medicine. .

Israel’s campaign has left powerlessness in the vast Gaza Strip, and lawlessness has become a dangerous factor in trying to get aid to the people in need. Systematic theft has occurred He repeatedly took off his clothesincluding from convoy of 100 trucks holding UN aid at the end of last year.

Israel has continued to attack Gaza since it was announced, and in the past 24 hours, 23 Palestinians have been killed and 83 others injured, the Gaza health ministry said on Saturday morning. More than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Much-needed aid is expected to pour into Gaza as soon as the ceasefire begins. Egypt, which shares a border with the enclave, is stepping up preparations on Friday to provide aid including food and tents, according to Al Qahera News, an Egyptian news agency.