Qatar's foreign ministry announced Israel and the palestinian islamist group have agreed to deliver medicines, hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in exchange for supplying aid to civilians. Following french and qatari mediation, the United nations says the war has displaced roughly 85% of Gaza's 2.4 million people, many of whom have been forced to crowd into shelters and struggle to get food, water, fuel and medical care. Under the deal, the humanitarian supplies will leave the qatari capital, Dohar for Egypt later today. The aid will then be taken to Gaza to be delivered to civilians. While medicines are to reach israeli captives, more than 132 hostages are thought to be still held in Gaza. Live now to our Middle east correspondent, Yoland. Nell Yoland, what more can you tell us about this deal and how difficult it was to come to an agreement?

Yes. So this is a deal we first heard about a few days ago, and then it seems to have hit some logistical problems. Now those have been resolved, we understand Qatar has been the important party here, assisted by the French, the French saying that something like 45 of the remaining hostages are suffering from chronic diseases or need life saving medicines of other kinds. So now those medicines have been acquired and we understand that they will be flown from Doha today on air force jets, taken into Egypt and then will be transferred across to Gaza in exchange. We understand Hamas has accepted that there will be a big increase in the number of medicines allowed in for palestinian civilians suffering in Gaza.

Right. And what about the broader aid question in Gaza?

I mean, this is a big issue. We've had the World Food Program coming out in recent days saying that people are at risk of dying of starvation just miles away from trucks full with food. And they're really asking the different UN aid agencies for more entry points to be opened up to go into Gaza and easing of the very tight, and they say laborious security checks that need to be carried out, things made more streamlined, also making it easier for humanitarian workers to distribute the aid, giving them some guarantees of safety, because at the moment, that is one of the major problems. Even when aid can be gotten into Gaza, you can't distribute it easily around the Gaza Strip. There's so much ongoing fighting in the south. There are other issues, like another telecommunications blackout. So it makes it very hard to coordinate with teams on the ground.

Yoland, the fact that this agreement was struck, is it a sign that there is hope for more diplomacy and even a ceasefire?

I mean, what's interesting is the fact that this deal was announced, and we just also had last night the White House saying that its Middle east envoy had just been in Qatar and had taken part in very, very serious and intensive discussions about the possibility of another hostage release deal. In exchange, of course, that would be for some kind of a ceasefire. So the White House saying that it's hopeful, although indicating that there's still a long way to go, although the fact.

That the agreement includes medicines to be.

Delivered to the israeli hostages is an implicit admission, or admission perhaps is the.

Wrong word, but it's implicit indication that.

They'Re still alive and can be located.

That does appear to be a sort of hopeful sign from this, and it's really a hopeful sign for the families of the hostages. Some of them had actually gone to Qatar to meet the prime minister in recent days and really press for some kind of breakthrough, starting off with the medicine. We know, of course, that some of the hostages are older people, people who were taking daily medicines for different health conditions, and that also there were others who were injured. And that has also been a factor, a lot of concern about what's happened to them. A bit of information that has come from the hostages who were released under that deal that saw about half of the total of 240 originally taken on the 7 October by Hamas released. And it's been something that we've heard a lot about on the israeli side. This will bring some kind of a relief for people, but they desperately want much more to be done.

Yoland, thank you very much indeed. Thank.