On October 9, 2025, Israel’s cabinet approved President Donald Trump’s plan for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, AP reported. The approval of the outline of the deal was the key political step needed for the ceasefire to begin, and an Israeli official said the truce should take effect immediately after the government vote.

According to the same report, the Israeli military then had 24 hours to pull back its forces to an agreed-upon line. The agreement was presented as the first phase of a broader plan to halt a war that had already killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, reduced much of Gaza to rubble and left hostages both living and dead in the territory.

The cabinet’s decision came after Trump announced that the parties had agreed to the first phase of the deal. He said the complicated hostage release could happen Monday or Tuesday and suggested he might travel to Egypt for a signing ceremony. His administration also said it had 170,000 metric tons of aid ready to move into Gaza once the route opened.

Even as the cabinet approved the deal, the AP report said the broader questions remained unresolved: whether Hamas would disarm, how Gaza would be governed and how the withdrawal would be carried out in practice. Israeli strikes continued in the hours before the vote, including a strike on a building in Gaza City that killed at least two people and trapped many others under rubble.

Public reaction showed both relief and exhaustion. Families of hostages celebrated in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, while Palestinians in Gaza described the announcement as a moment of hope mixed with grief and uncertainty. The deal therefore marked a turning point, but it did not yet answer the central political question: whether the ceasefire would be enough to end the war or merely pause it.

Even before the cabinet vote, AP reported that Israeli strikes were still hitting Gaza City, including one that killed at least two people and left many trapped beneath rubble. That matters because it shows diplomacy and violence proceeding at the same time, with neither side willing to stop the battlefield pressure before the first phase was formally in place.

The agreement also left Netanyahu in a narrow political position. He needed to show that hostages were coming home while also preserving the image of having weakened Hamas, and the unresolved details meant any delay or breakdown could quickly become a domestic crisis. In that sense, the cabinet approval was less an ending than the opening of a very unstable next stage.

In practical terms, the cabinet vote gave the deal its first test: whether words on paper could become an actual pause in fighting. That transition depends on a chain of events that still has to hold together, from pullback lines to hostage release schedules, and any failure would immediately reopen the political fight over the war.

In the end, the ceasefire’s first test was not rhetoric but whether the timetable could hold.