The full Israeli government voted early Saturday in favor of approving the hostage-ceasefire agreement with Hamas, after the security cabinet gave its blessing to the deal on Friday.

The Prime Minister’s Office issued a brief statement after 1 a.m. confirming the government approved the deal after meeting for more than seven hours. Twenty-four ministers voted in favor of the deal and eight opposed.

The statement added that the deal would enter into force on Sunday, when the first three Israeli hostages are to be freed. Thirty-three hostages are to be freed in the first, 42-day phase of the deal.

Now that the government has approved the agreement, opponents of the deal can petition the High Court of Justice against the release of Palestinian security prisoners who are set to be freed, though the court is unlikely to intervene.

Among the ministers who voted against the deal were David Amsalem and Amichai Chikli, both members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. Communications Minister Shlomi Karhi, another Likud member, was not present.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was joined by the cabinet members in his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party, Yitzhak Wasserlauf and Amichai Eliyahu, in voting against the deal. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and his far-right Religious Zionism party’s Orit Strock and Ofer Sofer also voted against the agreement.

Otzma Yehudit has threatened to quit the coalition over the deal, while Religious Zionism will apparently remain in the government despite opposing it, after Netanyahu reportedly reached understandings with Smotrich to keep his faction in the fold.

The cabinet votes were held after the Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams signed the deal in Doha early Friday morning, with the Prime Minister’s Office initially announcing the full government would not convene until Saturday evening to approve it. The meeting ended up being moved up after numerous ministers, including Haredi members of the cabinet, said Shabbat considerations should not put off a life-saving matter.

However, as the meeting ended up starting late and ran hours into Shabbat, several ultra-Orthodox ministers did not participate but left instructions for the cabinet secretary to count them among the agreement’s supporters. Shas Minister Michael Malcheli wrote on his note, “There is no more important commandment than saving the lives of hostages.”

Following the vote by the full cabinet, the Justice Ministry published a list in Hebrew of 735 Palestinian detainees and security prisoners to be released during the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.

The list includes numerous terrorists serving life sentences for murder, among them members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority’s ruling........

© The Times of Israel