In separate statements, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch welcomed the announcement of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, but stressed that the nightmare will not end until the 18-year blockade on the Strip is lifted.

“A belated ceasefire will not be enough to repair the lives of Palestinians shattered by Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard.

She added that reaching a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was announced last night from the State of Qatar, would provide "some relief to the victims of the genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinians," but this step came "late," according to the organization.

She stressed that "the nightmare will not end with the cessation of the bombing for the Palestinians who have been subjected to more than 15 months of continuous and devastating bombing, who have been repeatedly displaced from their homes and are struggling to survive in temporary tents without food or water."

She stated that this suffering will continue unless Israel quickly lifts the illegal blockade it imposes on the Gaza Strip.

According to the organization, Israel's continued and deliberate denial and obstruction of humanitarian aid to Gaza "has left civilians facing unprecedented levels of hunger and children dying of starvation."

The organization accused the international community of failing so far "shamefully" to persuade Israel to comply with its legal obligations. It called for ensuring that "Israel immediately allows life-saving supplies to reach all parts of the occupied Gaza Strip to ensure the survival of the Palestinian population."

This includes, according to the organization, ensuring the entry of vital medical supplies to treat the wounded and sick, and facilitating urgent repairs to medical facilities and other vital infrastructure.

The organization also called on the Israeli authorities to urgently grant independent human rights monitors access to the Gaza Strip to uncover evidence and the extent of violations.

For its part, Human Rights Watch said that "over the past 15 months, civilians have been targeted, attacked and killed on a scale unprecedented in modern history."

To end these atrocities, Israel needs to lift its blockade, allow in humanitarian aid on the scale necessary to meet urgent needs, and ensure the restoration of basic services such as electricity and water, she added, “otherwise people will continue to die, whether there is a ceasefire or not.”

Israel has been besieging the Gaza Strip for 18 years, and the war of extermination in the Strip has forced about two million of its population, numbering about 2.2 million, to flee in catastrophic conditions.

On Wednesday evening, the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, announced in a press conference in Doha that the mediators had succeeded in reaching an agreement to exchange prisoners and return to sustainable calm, leading to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, noting that the agreement would begin to be implemented next Sunday.

The agreement was announced on the 467th day of the Israeli war of extermination on the Gaza Strip, which, with American support, left more than 156,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, amidst massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and elderly people, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.