Negotiators raced on Thursday to resolve last-minute disputes in a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas that would free hostages and end the violence that has ravaged Gaza for the past 15 months.

The disputes helped delay a critical Israeli vote to approve the deal by at least a day.

Although negotiators for Israel and Hamas have arrived provisional agreement on Wednesdaythey continued discussions on open issues through mediators. The Israeli government, whose approval is needed to extend the ceasefire, was expected to vote on the matter on Thursday, but the vote was postponed.

The deal has reopened deep divisions in Israel, where hardliners in the ruling coalition fiercely oppose the ceasefire. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, announced Thursday night that his party would withdraw from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition if the government approves a ceasefire agreement.

The move threatens to destabilize the government at a critical moment, but should not, in itself, prevent a deal from being reached.

The United States, which has spent months fighting to reach a deal alongside Qatar and Egypt, played down the delay and insisted the ceasefire would take effect on Sunday as planned.

“I am confident and fully expect that implementation will begin,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters Thursday. “It’s not really surprising that in the process, the negotiations, which were so challenging — so full — we can get a loose end. We’re wrapping up that loose end as we speak.”

He added that he spoke by phone with the US envoy to the region and Qatari officials, trying to resolve the final issues.

In Israel, the prime minister’s office accused Hamas of violating parts of the agreement.

“There is no deal at this time,” Netanyahu’s spokesman, Omer Dostri, said in a text message Thursday. “So no cabinet meeting.”

A Hamas official, Izzat al-Rishq, said the group remained committed to the deal announced by mediators.

Disagreements over the last-minute deal included questions about which Palestinians might be released and how Israeli forces would be deployed along Gaza’s border with Egypt during the truce, Mr. Dostri said.

After months of watching negotiations to reach a cease-fire repeatedly fail, many Gazans, Israelis and others expressed only muted hope about the fate of the current job.

“I wish I could say I’m happy,” said Fadia Nassar, a 43-year-old who lost her home in the northern Gaza Strip, moving to the south. The deal, she said, could “fall through for any number of reasons.”

“My heart is broken,” she added. “I’ll probably stay in the tent. Hundreds of thousands will end up in tents.”

And deadly Israeli airstrikes continued in Gaza on Thursday, with Israel’s military saying it hit about 50 targets across the territory over the past day.

“The reality in the Strip remains very difficult and catastrophic,” said Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defense. emergency service under the Hamas-run Ministry of the Interior.

In recent Israeli attacks in the area, at least 81 people were killed and nearly 200 others were wounded, according to to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between fighters and civilians. Civil Defense said at least 77 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since the deal was announced. The claims could not be independently verified.

Israel’s military said its recent targets included Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, their bases, weapons storage areas and other locations, adding that “numerous steps” were taken to prevent civilian harm before attacks.

Mediators hope the cease-fire deal — which would begin with a 42-day truce and the release of some hostages — will ultimately end the war that began with a Hamas-led attack in October 2023 that killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 hostage. . The ensuing Israeli military campaign killed tens of thousands of Gazans and forced almost the enclave’s entire population to flee their homes.

In Israel, Mr. Ben-Gvir and other stubborn members of the government of Mr. Netanyahu, the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in Israeli history, opposed the agreement and pushed for the war to continue until Hamas was eliminated.

Mr. Ben-Gvir’s party, Jewish Power, has six seats in the 120-seat parliament, and the party’s withdrawal from the ruling coalition would cut its majority from 68 to a razor-thin 62. He said his party would offer to rejoin if the government continued its war against Hamas.

Earlier on Thursday, dozens of protesters in Israel blocked a major highway in Jerusalem to protest the deal and were eventually dispersed by police.

One of the protesters, Eliyahu Shahar, 21, said the deal was a threat to Israel’s security and should be rejected, “even if it means more hostages die.”

If the vote goes ahead, the ceasefire deal is expected to win Israeli approval even without the support of the two far-right parties in the ruling coalition. The families of the hostages welcomed the deal, and opposition parties generally pledged to support Netanyahu’s coalition, if necessary, to ensure the implementation of a deal that would free Israelis still held in Gaza.

“This is more important than any difference of opinion that has ever existed between us,” Yair Lapid, the leader of the Israeli opposition, said in a statement.

Yona Schnitzer, 36, a marketing writer from Tel Aviv, said he felt “cautiously optimistic” about the deal. “I hope that this time a deal will actually happen,” he said. “If that is confirmed and agreed upon, I will be relieved, firstly because the hostages will come home, and secondly because it will bring us closer to ending this war.”

The ceasefire agreement it will start with an initial phase lasting six weeks. That would include the release of 33 hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and allow 600 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza a day, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by The New York Times.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the ceasefire agreement as “the hope the region desperately needs”. But she added that the situation in Gaza is still gloomy. She announced that Europe will provide $123 million in aid for Gazans this year, along with in-kind aid such as food shipments.

Diplomats hope that the first phase of the agreement will lead to more permanent terms, which Mr. Blinken stressed on Thursday.

“It will take an enormous effort, political courage, compromise, to realize this possibility, to try to ensure that the gains that have been achieved in the past 15 months at enormous, unbearable costs are actually permanent,” he said.

But in Gaza, where rubble dominates the landscape and huge questions remain about what the post-war future will look like, there was uncertainty and exhaustion.

“It definitely feels good to hear about the ceasefire,” said Nizar Hammad, a 31-year-old who lost his home in Gaza City. “But when I think about life after the war, I think about the suffering that will continue. The scale of destruction and losses is enormous.”

“Honestly, I feel numb,” said Aseel Mutier, a 22-year-old from Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, whose 16-year-old brother was killed during the war and whose house was destroyed last week.

“We’re just waiting for Sunday,” she added. “We don’t know what will happen between now and then.”

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel, and Isabel Kershner and Nathan Odenheimer from Jerusalem.