Israel’s military confirmed on Thursday that a truce with Hamas will continue, allowing further hostage and prisoner releases and the possibility of more a durable pause in hostilities.
There were frantic diplomatic efforts through the night to prolong the six-day halt to fighting in Gaza which was set to end at 7am local time (5am GMT) on Thursday. The current extension appears to be only for 24 hours, though this has yet to be explicitly confirmed by all parties.
The Israeli military’s confirmation came just minutes before the ceasefire was due to expire.
Just over an hour later, a statement from the office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu office said the war cabinet had come close to ending the truce after unanimously deciding “that if an acceptable list of further prisoners to be released was not delivered by 07:00 this morning [Thursday], fighting would resume at once”.
“A list of women and children – in accordance with the terms of the outline [of the ceasefire agreement last week]– was delivered to Israel a short time ago; therefore, the pause will continue,” it said.
Hamas, which freed 16 hostages in exchange for 30 Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday night, also confirmed that the truce would be extended into a seventh day as did Qatar, which has been acting as a mediator.
Hamas claimed that Israel had refused to receive seven women and children and the bodies of three other hostages in exchange for extending the truce, and the last-minute negotiations underlined the extreme fragility of the current ceasefire agreement, as diplomats rush to find a more durable deal that will prevent a return to war.
Both sides have stressed they have the will and capabilities to continue the conflict, with Hamas’s armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades telling its forces to “maintain high combat readiness in the last hours of the truce”.
The Israeli Defence Forces ( IDF) said its chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, had “approved the attack plans for the continuation of the campaign”, showing him inspecting maps with his commanders.
“We know what needs to be done, and are ready for the next step,” Halevi said.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken arrived in Israel for talks on Wednesday night, amid intense international pressure for both sides to extend the pause to allow more hostage releases and additional aid into devastated Gaza.
Conditions in the territory remain “catastrophic”, according to the World Food Programme, and the population faces a “high risk of famine”.
The directors of the CIA and the Mossad, William Burns and David Barnea, spent a second day in Doha in talks with the Qatari government aimed at stretching the truce further. The director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate, Abbas Kamel, was also reported to be taking part in the discussions.
On Wednesday night, before the extension was announced, Israeli military radio said 10 Israelis and four Thais had been handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza. The group included dual citizens with US, German and German nationality, Qatar said. The IDF said two hostages with Russian citizenship had crossed into Egypt.
Thirty Palestinian prisoners were later freed by Israel, including Ahed Tamimi, a well-known 22-year-old activist and writer who was sentenced to eight months in prison for slapping and kicking an Israeli soldier in 2017.
Israeli troops arrested Tamimi on November 6 at her West Bank home, saying a post on her Instagram account was an “incitement to terrorism”. Her mother said the post was fake.
As soon as she got off the Red Cross bus, Tamimi was surrounded by a crowd of supporters and family members. “I am always strong,” Tamimi told one well-wisher before being driven away by relatives toward her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh.
The two Russian-Israeli hostages released by Hamas were named as were Yelena Trupanob, 50, and her mother, Irena Tati, a doctor aged 73. Hamas said they had been released outside the framework of the Hamas-Israeli hostage deal, as a “tribute” to Vladimir Putin. The other 10 Israeli hostages comprised five women and five children.
Joe Biden said the released hostages included an Israeli-American woman, Liat Beinin, 49, and said he had spoken to her mother and father.
“They’re very appreciative and things are moving well,” he told reporters before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington. “She’ll soon be home with her three children,” he said.
Hamas informed Israeli authorities that three of the hostages had been killed earlier in Israeli bombing of Gaza, naming them as Shiri Bibas, 32, and her two sons: four-year-old Ariel and Kfir, a 10-month-old baby. The IDF said it was investigating the claim about the Bibas family and accused Hamas of behaving in a “cruel and inhuman manner”. There was no independent verification of the claim and previous similar claims have proved unfounded.
The war was triggered when Hamas launched attacks into Israel last month killing 1,200 civilians and taking 240 captive. Israel responded with a military offensive which has killed around 15,000 in Gaza, around 40 percent children, according to Hamas-run local authorities’ figures.
Israel said on Wednesday that about 160 hostages were still held in Gaza. Of those, 126 are men and 35 are women. Four are under the age of 18, and 10 over the age of 75.
Keeping the truce going depends on tougher negotiations over the release of the men Israel says are held captive, including several dozen soldiers.
For the release of Israeli men – and especially soldiers – Hamas is expected to demand freedom for significant numbers of Palestinian men in Israeli jails, including some prominent detainees, a price that Israel may be unwilling to pay without further rounds of fighting which Israeli officials believe may force Hamas into concessions.
An Israeli official involved in hostage negotiations said talks on a further extension for the release of civilian males and soldiers were still preliminary, and that a deal would not be considered until all the women and children were out. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations were ongoing.
Hamas has publicly stated it wants an “all for all deal” – all Israeli hostages for all Palestinian prisonsers in Israel jails.
Netanyahu made clear he had no intention of considering a more lasting ceasefire. “After this phase of returning our abductees is exhausted, will Israel return to fighting? So my answer is an unequivocal yes,” Netanyahu said on Wednesday. “There is no way we are not going back to fighting until the end.”
