The Israel-Hamas hostages-for-prisoners exchange is a more generous deal for Hamas than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he’d even consider a week ago. What changed? What impact might the deal have on the war? And will the cease-fire—a prominent feature of the agreement—improve Israel’s image in the rest of the world?

Under the deal, 50 Israeli hostages will be released from Hamas hideaways and 150 Palestinian prisoners will be freed from Israeli jails. All of those freed, in this first phase, will be women or minors. This will occur over a four-day period beginning Thursday. While this goes on, the war will come to a halt—no shooting, no arrests, no bombing or shelling, no movement of troops or Gazan refugees. At the same time, aid workers will bring into Gaza a flow of humanitarian supplies unseen since the war began Oct. 7.

Then, as a way of extending both the peace and the number of captives released, the cease-fire will be prolonged by another 24 hours for every 10 hostages released. Since Hamas and possibly other radical groups hold an estimated 230 hostages in Gaza, the pause in fighting and the flow of humanitarian aid could potentially continue into mid-December and beyond.

Until a few days ago, Netanyahu resisted all calls for a cease-fire—even a temporary “pause”—unless Hamas released all hostages ahead of time. The most far-right parties in Netanyahu’s coalition government stuck to that position during Tuesday’s debate on the proposal. However, Netanyahu himself pushed for the deal, which was also endorsed by Israel’s security and intelligence ministries. It easily passed the full Cabinet.

Israel has always been willing to strike lopsided deals to free hostages, and the deal struck Tuesday—after seven weeks of negotiations instigated by Qatar, a frequent middleman in dealings with Hamas—was less lopsided than many. In 2011, Israel freed more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of a single soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been nabbed by Palestinian militants on the border of Gaza five years earlier. (The few Israeli parliamentarians who opposed the current deal also criticized the Shalit trade, noting that one of the prisoners freed, Yahya Sinwar is now Hamas’ political leader, ranked No. 1 on the Israel Defense Forces’ kill list.)

The current phase of this seemingly eternal war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants cut through the fence dividing Israel from Gaza and brutally murdered 1,200 Jews, the vast majority of them civilians. Israel responded by pounding Gaza with airstrikes and mobilizing reservists for an invasion. The IDF said it was targeting Hamas sites that were located in residential neighborhoods, in some cases beneath hospitals and schools. More than 12,000 people have been killed in these strikes so far, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not specify how many of that number were civilians. Protests erupted worldwide, most of them against Israel’s airstrikes. Many demanded an Israeli cease-fire, saying little about Hamas’........

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