ANNOUNCER: “This is CNN breaking news.”
BROWN: “The breaking news coming in to CNN, a senior Biden Administration official confirming that Hamas has agreed to a hostage release and ceasefire deal. I want to go straight to Senior White House correspondent MJ Lee with the latest. MJ. MJ, what can you tell us about this deal that Hamas has agreed to? All right, MJ cannot hear us. I’m going to go to Alex Marquardt. This is a massive deal, weeks in the making, Alex.”
MARQUARDT: “It certainly is. If not longer, Pam. We have been waiting for more than 13 months since the last ceasefire deal and since the last time there was an exchange of hostages and prisoners for this moment. It appears that this deal is imminent, if not done already. We’re reporting that Hamas has agreed to the deal. There was certainly an expectation from the Israeli side that they would agree to a deal. All of this, of course, brokered after intensive negotiations with the mediators, the United States, Qatar and Egypt. So this is obviously extremely welcome news after some 14 months of fighting. And what we expect to happen, if indeed this — this deal goes into effect, is that over the course of some six weeks, we would see more than 30 Israeli hostages released by Hamas and other groups who are holding them in Gaza. I don’t think we have the exact number of Palestinian prisoners who would be released by Israel. And then there are all — there a bunch of other different elements that would go into effect. Palestinians would be allowed to go home in the Gaza Strip, more humanitarian aid would get to go in. But I think the point here, Pam, is that after weeks of feverish work on the U.S. side with both Biden Administration officials and officials from the incoming Trump team working in coordination with each other, they and the other mediators have managed to get the Israelis and Hamas, it appears across the finish line, where we are going to get a truce, a pause in this fighting. One thing I really want to emphasize is this does not mean the end of this war. This means a break in this war. Hopefully this break will last at least six weeks, if not longer. Hopefully all of these people will come home who are supposed to come home. But there are big questions about what would happen after this first phase of a ceasefire, which as it stands now, and this plan has been in place for quite some time since President Biden laid it out in May, this is expected to last around six weeks. So we’re still waiting for final word, I believe, from all of the parties. But this certainly seems imminent, if not a done deal already.”
BROWN: “I want to go back to MJ Lee at the White House. I believe we’re reconnected. MJ, what can you tell us about this plan?”