Israel and Hamas reached an agreement on Wednesday for a ceasefire and the discharge of hostages to finish the 15-month war within the Gaza Strip that has wreaked havoc across the region and inflamed tensions.

News of the agreement sparked joyous demonstrations within the streets late Wednesday local time in each Israel and the Gaza enclave, setting the stage for ending a conflict that has killed around 1,200 people within the Jewish state and greater than 46,000 people within the were killed within the blockaded Gaza territory, in response to Israeli and Palestinian health authorities.

Speaking on the White House, President Joe Biden said the agreement could be implemented in three phases that might begin as early as Sunday, January 19.

Israel's security cabinet still must vote on the deal before it’s implemented, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog calling on the federal government to “accept and approve” it in an address to the nation from his office.

If the deal is approved, the primary phase will include a full ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of the Gaza enclave, Biden said.

Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani – whose country played a key mediating role in recent negotiations and in brokering a brief pause in fighting in November 2023 – said the primary phase would last 42 days and see Hamas release 33 Israelis Prisoners captured through the October 7, 2023 attacks in exchange for “a number of prisoners” currently incarcerated in Israel.

In this primary phase, an increased flow of aid and humanitarian assistance can be sent to all parts of the Gaza Strip, while hospitals and health centers can be renovated and essential fuel supplies will enter the enclave, al Thani said at a press conference in Doha on Wednesday.

Humanitarian organizations have already warned of the danger of famine and epidemics within the Gaza Strip attributable to the shortage or destruction of food, water and sanitation supplies.

Additionally, phase one will allow Palestinians to return to their homes within the Gaza Strip, a lot of which have been destroyed within the last yr and a half of fighting. According to Biden, the return of civilians can be accompanied by a rise in humanitarian aid to the enclave.

Details of the second and third phases of the agreement could be finalized through the implementation of the primary phase, Al Thani said, with the US noting that the temporary ceasefire would remain in effect should negotiations last more than six weeks.

Biden said all remaining living hostages could be released on this second phase. Likewise, Israeli soldiers will withdraw from the remaining areas of the Gaza Strip during this era and “the ceasefire will become permanent.”

The final phase of the agreement will include the implementation of a reconstruction plan for the Gaza Strip.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the proposed agreement was based on a framework presented by the Biden administration in May.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri called the agreement “a big win,” Reuters reported.

CNBC has reached out to the Israeli prime minister's office for comment.

The Israel Defense Forces published a message related to the deal

International leaders and key figures welcomed the ceasefire agreement, with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi – one other key mediator within the ceasefire talks – emphasizing this in a Google-translated comment Social media post “The importance of accelerating the access of urgent humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza in order to address the current catastrophic humanitarian situation without obstacles.”

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres praised the deal and called on “everyone to facilitate rapid, unhindered and safe humanitarian assistance to all civilians in need,” and pledged to “do everything humanly possible, recognizing the serious challenges we will face.”

“After 15 months of an unjustified ordeal, immense relief for the people of Gaza, hope for the hostages and their families,” said French President Emmanuel Macron saidin response to a CNBC translation. “A political solution must take place.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed the “long overdue message” and said his country and its allies “will continue to lead this critical effort to break the cycle of violence and secure long-term peace in the Middle East.”

The breakthrough got here just days before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20 – a date seen by many because the de facto deadline for mediation after Trump vowed there could be “hell to pay.” if Hamas didn’t release Israeli hostages when he took office.

Both Biden and Trump envoys were present at the most recent rounds of negotiations.

With just days left in his term, Biden acknowledged that the exertions of implementing this agreement will largely fall to the brand new Trump administration.

“In the last few days we have spoken as a team,” the president said of his team and Trump’s. “As I prepare to leave office, our friends are strong, our enemies are weak and there is a real opportunity for a new future.”

In recent months, each Hamas and Israeli officials have largely agreed to achieve a ceasefire in return for the discharge of Israeli hostages held by the Gaza Strip-based militant group.

However, the continued sticking point remained Hamas's demand that a full release of the hostages must end in an entire withdrawal of the Israeli military from Gaza and an end to the war, while Israeli leaders believed that the Gaza campaign must proceed until Hamas is destroyed.

At the tip of July, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee added a site within the Gaza Strip – the Monastery of St. Hilarion, also often known as Tell Umm Amer – to each the list of “World Heritage” and the list of “World Heritage in Danger”.

The decision, taken through the forty sixth session of the World Heritage Committee in New Delhi, India, reflects the worth and wish for defense of the traditional monastery, based on UNESCO.

The committee added the monastery – one among the oldest sites within the Middle East based on UNESCO – to each lists under an expedited procedure set out within the World Heritage Convention. The procedure allows for the accelerated inscription of threatened sites.

“The ongoing conflict in Gaza, which could pose a threat to this archaeological site, is a situation in which this procedure is possible,” a UNESCO spokesperson told CNBC Travel.

UNESCO said it has not found any damage to the location thus far and is monitoring the location remotely using satellite imagery.

As a results of the entries, UNESCO’s 196 “State Parties” – or countries which have World Heritage Convention UNESCO stated that comprehensive protection of the location – which it adopted in 1972 – must prevent direct or indirect damage and contribute to its protection.

Although Israel isn’t any longer a UNESCO member, it’s a contracting state and is subsequently certain by the provisions of the convention to guard the monastery and never cause harm to it, UNESCO told CNBC Travel.

Together with the United States, Israel left UNESCO on December 31, 2018 amid allegations of anti-Israel bias on the UN agency, which reached its peak after the organization admitted “the State of Palestine” as a member in 2011.

Under the Biden administration, the United States officially rejoined UNESCO in July 2023.

Israel has not rejoined UNESCO, but has sent delegations as non-voting observers to the World Heritage Committee's annual meetings, including a high-profile appearance on the 2023 meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Simultaneous inscriptions on the UNESCO World Heritage List and the “Endangered” lists are quite common, a UNESCO spokesperson told CNBC.

Recent examples include the historic centre of the Ukrainian port city of Odessa and the archaeological sites of the previous Yemeni Kingdom of Sheba, each of which were added to the list in January 2023.

There are currently 1,123 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List, but only 56 are on the List of Sites in Danger, which incorporates sites threatened by war, natural disasters, pollution, excessive tourism or other problems.

Sites on the At-Risk List can also receive technical and financial assistance for defense and restoration work.

Requests to make use of the emergency procedure for simultaneous registrations must come from a State Party, the UNESCO spokesman said.

“Palestine first placed the site on its provisional list in 2012,” the spokesman said, referring to a listing of websites that countries intend to nominate as World Heritage sites in the longer term. “In June 2024 [it] submitted the nomination of the 'Saint Hilarion/Tell Umm Amer Monastery' with the request to process it in an emergency.”

The admission was decided by consensus among the many committee members, the spokesman said.

The forty sixth session of the World Heritage Committee ended on Wednesday with 26 latest sites added to the UNESCO World Heritage Listand the small Micronesian island of Nauru became its 196th contracting state.

The Israeli military announced on Thursday that it had killed the top of Hamas's military wing, Mohammed Deif, in an airstrike in July.

“We can now confirm: Mohammed Deif has been eliminated,” the Israel Defense Forces said posted on his official X account.

The military said it had spent weeks trying to verify whether Deif, the goal of the attack within the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, was killed within the blast, while Hamas denied his death. Hamas didn’t immediately comment on the IDF's Thursday announcement when contacted by CNBC.

Israel says Deif and Yahya Sinwar, the highest Hamas leader in Gaza, were the primary planners of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people and took one other 253 hostage. Around 116 of those prisoners have since been released.

The October attack sparked the 10-month war between Israel and Hamas and the Israeli military offensive within the Gaza Strip, which local authorities say has already killed greater than 39,000 people.

The Israeli military said the attack that killed Deif took place on July 13 and hit a compound on the outskirts of Khan Younis, near a tent camp for displaced Palestinians. More than 90 people were killed within the attack, lots of them living within the tents, Gaza health authorities said on the time.

The Israeli statement got here only a day after Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an attack on Tehran. Hamas and Iran claim the attack was carried out by Israel, while the Jewish state declined to comment on Haniyeh's death.

Haniyeh's death had been triggered just hours earlier by an Israeli attack on southern Beirut that, in keeping with the Israeli military, killed Fuad Shukr, a senior leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group who ordered and took part in quite a few terrorist attacks on Israeli and US targets.

The triple death of high-ranking Hamas and Hezbollah leaders inside barely three days is a severe blow to Hamas, say regional analysts, but in addition a severe blow to any hopes of a ceasefire within the near future.

“Israel may feel it has exacted revenge on two of its greatest enemies with sophisticated attacks,” said Hugh Lovatt, senior policy fellow on the European Council on Foreign Relations, before Deif's death was announced. “But its actions have once again brought the Middle East to the brink of dangerous escalation.”

Deif operated in secret for a very long time and was almost never seen in public. There are few photos of him. In the Nineties, he founded the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, and led quite a few suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israel.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called Deif the “Osama Bin Laden of Gaza” in An entry on the social media platform X and said his death marked “a significant milestone in the process of defeating Hamas as the military and government authority in the Gaza Strip and in achieving the goals of this war.”

Gallant added: “Israel's defense apparatus will pursue Hamas terrorists – both the planners and perpetrators of the July 10 massacre. We will not rest until this mission is accomplished.”