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Hagaon HaRav David Yosef wishing Refuah Sheleimah to the Vishnitzer Rebbe as thousands attend the Simchas Bais HaShoeva.

יבטל כל הגזירות! Thousands join Reb Meilich Biederman at a Simchas Bais HaShoeva in Yerushalyim on Tuesday night

El Al pilots received message to announce about the end of the war.

Hamas says alive hostages to be exchanged for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners within 72 hours of deal implementation – AFP

In the Gaza Strip, armed gunmen are heard firing into the air in celebration after the announcement of the war-ending agreement.

President Trump will arrive in Israel on Sunday and will address the Knesset following the signing of the deal, Ynet reports.

Photographs released from Cairo show members of the Israeli, American, and Qatari delegations embracing and shaking hands, signaling what appears to be a breakthrough after months of painstaking negotiations.

According to Saudi news outlet Al-Hadath, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is set to be formally signed on Thursday at 12:00 noon.

Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu expressed optimism in a brief statement, writing, “With God’s help we will bring them all home.”

Israeli officials confirmed earlier that “the agreement will be signed later today, with the first release expected either on Shabbos or Sunday.”

A senior U.S. official told Channel 12 News reporter Barak Ravid on Wednesday night that “the war in Gaza is over.”

The same official added that the release of hostages will take place within 72 hours following the Israeli Cabinet’s ratification of the deal, a step expected to occur no later than Monday.

An Egyptian official involved in the talks told Sky News Arabia that “the agreement includes a complete ceasefire, a gradual withdrawal of the Israeli army from 70% of the Gaza Strip, and the simultaneous release of hostages and prisoners from both sides.”

A Palestinian Arab source quoted by the Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed said, “The disputed points in the negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh have been resolved, and Trump will announce the agreement soon.”

Amid the emotional anticipation surrounding the deal, Ditza Or—the mother of Avinatan, who remains captive in Gaza—shared a verse on social media from Isaiah 52:7: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation.”

A Hamas insider told the Lebanese network Al-Mayadeen that the organization has formally accepted the terms, with the signing ceremony scheduled to take place today in Egypt.

Reflecting the tense hope gripping the nation, Yediot Achronot columnist Nadav Eyal wrote on X: “Israelis can’t sleep tonight. They wait, breath held, for the end of a nightmare that began two years ago. Above all, for the agreement that will bring all the hostages home.”

{Matzav.com}

President Trump revealed Wednesday that both Israel and Hamas have formally approved the initial stage of a peace framework aimed at halting the fighting in Gaza and securing the release of hostages held by the terror group.

“This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace,” Trump declared in a message on Truth Social.

The president went on to emphasize the broad scope of the agreement’s impact, writing, “All Parties will be treated fairly!” and hailing it as “a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America.”

During a public event later in the day, Trump interrupted his remarks after receiving a note from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “I was just given a note by the secretary of state saying that we’re very close to a deal in the Middle East and they’re gonna need me pretty quickly,” the president told the audience.

In his post, Trump also expressed appreciation to the mediating nations that helped broker the deal, thanking “the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen.”

He concluded his statement with a flourish characteristic of his style: “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”

{Matzav.com}

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and U.S. President Trump spoke by phone, congratulating each other on tonight’s ceasefire and hostage deal in Egypt. Netanyahu thanked Trump for his leadership, while Trump praised Netanyahu’s actions, and Netanyahu also invited Trump to address the Knesset.

WATCH: Fox News’s Bret Baier reads President Trump’s post announcing the agreement on the first phase of his historic peace deal in Gaza.

Yesterday, the IDF carried out two separate strikes in southern Lebanon within an hour, killing two Hezbollah operatives. The first strike in the town of Deir Aames killed Ali Issa, who served as Hezbollah’s local representative in nearby Kfara and was responsible for coordinating with residents on both economic and military matters, the military says.

The Shin Bet security agency says it recently prevented an Iranian attempt to smuggle significant quantities of advanced weapons to terror operatives in the West Bank for use against Israeli targets.

Authorities in Beersheba are tearing down an apartment complex in the southern city that was directly struck by an Iranian ballistic missile during the closing hours of June’s 12-day war.

The New York Daily News editorial board ripped into NYC mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani for his anti-Israel, antisemitic views, after the candidate’s statement on the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre: On today’s two-year anniversary of the horrid Hamas Oct. 7 pogrom against Israel, there will be protests in New York both against and in support of Israel. It’s not hard to guess which protests will have the sympathy of mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani, whose deep animosity towards Israel is a problem for hundreds of thousands of Jewish New Yorkers. While Mamdani says he respects all New Yorkers of all faiths, his stance that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state strikes at a core belief for many Jews. It is a position that smacks of antisemitism in its rejection of an article of faith held so dearly by so many. Don’t let his rhetoric about what’s going on in Gaza right now fool you: This is not about Bibi Netanyahu and the current policies of the incumbent Israeli government. It’s not about Gaza or the West Bank or the IDF or Jewish settlers. Many Israelis, in fact, oppose Netanyahu and his hard-right coalition. Americans like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer want Netanyahu out of office. But those foes of Netanyahu, Israeli or American, are not opposed to the existence of any Jewish Israeli government, like Mamdani is. Mamdani conflates political disagreement with a stance anathema to many New Yorkers. Those who he supports, who call opposition to a government’s policies “anti-Zionism,” willfully ignore the historical arc that led to the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the 20th century. Mamdani himself endorses the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, to cut off all economic relations with the Jewish state. He has said he discourages use of the phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” but refuses to condemn those who use it — even as it is used as a rallying cry to harm Jews. This is what he said when asked before the June primary about a Jewish state: “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else…. Equality should be enshrined in every country in the world. That’s my belief.” However, with the exception of the United States and maybe France, just about every country in the world, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe is based on ethnicity or religion or both: Ireland for the Irish, Poland for the Poles, Vietnam for the Vietnamese, Kuwait for Kuwaitis. The Jews are certainly a people, an ethnicity, as well as a faith. So should the Jews have a country? That is what Zionism is, national liberation for the Jewish people in their historic homeland. And that was the decision of the United Nations in 1947, that there be a Jewish state in the British Mandate of Palestine, along with an Arab state. Israel as a Jewish state, the world’s only Jewish state, is accepted by its Arab neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Even the PLO accepts Israel (that was the core of the 1993 Oslo Accords). Israel is accepted by Russia, by India, by China and just about the whole world. But Israel is not accepted by Hamas, not by Hezbollah, not by […]

New video footage shows the moment Marco Rubio informed Trump that a peace agreement in Gaza was “very close.”