ISRAELI forces began withdrawing from a key Gaza corridor today, Israeli officials said, part of Israel’s commitments under a brittle ceasefire deal with Hamas.

The deal is continuing to move ahead but faces a key test on whether both sides will be able to negotiate its planned extension.

Today, cars heaped with belongings, including water tanks and suitcases, were seen heading north through a road that crosses Netzarim. 

Under the deal, Israel is supposed to allow the cars to cross without inspection and there did not appear to be troops in the vicinity of the road.

Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanoua said that the withdrawal showed Hamas had “forced the enemy to submit to our demands” and that it thwarted “Netanyahu’s illusion of achieving total victory.”

Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not disclose how many soldiers were withdrawing.

Troops currently remain along Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt and a full withdrawal is expected to be negotiated in a later stage of the truce.

Israel agreed as part of the truce to remove its forces from the four-mile Netzarim corridor, a strip of land that bisects northern Gaza from the south that Israel used as a military zone during the war.

At the start of the ceasefire last month, Israel began allowing Palestinians to cross Netzarim to head to their homes in the war-battered north, sending hundreds of thousands streaming across Gaza on foot and by car. 

While the withdrawal of forces from the area will fulfil another commitment to the deal that paused some 15 months of fighting, the two sides appear to have made little progress on negotiating the deal’s second phase, which is meant to extend the truce and lead to the release of more Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was sending a delegation to Qatar, one of the mediators, but the mission included only low-level officials.

During the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire, Hamas is gradually releasing 33 Israeli hostages captured during its October 7 2023 attack in exchange for a pause in fighting, freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and a flood of humanitarian aid to war-battered Gaza. 

The deal also says that Israeli troops will pull back from populated areas of Gaza as well as the Netzarim corridor.

In the second phase, all remaining living hostages would be released in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a “sustainable calm.”

But details beyond that are unclear.