Israel is coming under increasing pressure to agree to an extension of a four-day pause in its war with Hamas.
US President Joe Biden said he supports prolonging the cease-fire, which is due to end on Tuesday morning and part of a deal to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. The halt in fighting is “critically needed” for additional aid to get into the territory and for more captives to be freed.
“This deal is delivering life-saving results,” Biden told reporters on Sunday. “This deal is structured so that it can be extended to keep building on these results. That’s my goal. That’s our goal: to keep this pause going beyond tomorrow.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Biden on Sunday and said an extension was possible, reiterating that every extra day of the truce is conditional on 10 more hostages being released. And he said Israel will not change its goal of trying to destroy Hamas.
A longer truce “would be welcome,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “At the same time, I also told President Biden that at the end of the outline, we will go to realizing our goals with full force: Eliminating Hamas, ensuring that Gaza will not go back to being what it was and – of course – releasing all of our hostages.”
The temporary halt began on Friday morning after intense negotiations brokered by Qatar, with the help of Egypt and the US. Hamas and Israel agreed that the Iran-backed militant group would free 50 hostages in return for the Israeli government releasing 150 jailed Palestinians.
The pause has held so far and Hamas let go of another 17 people on Sunday, including a four-year-old girl — a US-Israeli dual national — whose parents were killed by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. That attack sparked the war.
Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union, killed around 1,200 people that day and abducted 240. Israel retaliated with a massive bombardment of Gaza, which is run by Hamas, and a ground offensive. Around 15,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and much of the Mediterranean enclave’s been reduced to rubble.
Hamas has handed over 58 hostages through Sunday, including non-Israelis. Hamas is slated to free another 11 Israelis on Monday to fulfill the four-day agreement.
Some Israeli officials worry that the longer the pause goes on for, the harder it will be for Israel to restart the war.
“Hamas will stretch this out a long time,” said Joshua Krasna, a former senior Israeli diplomat and intelligence analyst. “The question is how much legitimacy Israel will have to restart its campaign after an extended cease-fire. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for the Israeli government to not continue the cease-fire if Hamas offers to release additional hostages.”
The civilian death toll in Gaza is causing increased concern among Democratic politicians in the US, with some calling for conditioning further military aid to Israel on compliance with international humanitarian law.
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The truce includes the delivery of more food and medicine into Gaza via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. The United Nations and Palestinian officials say the war’s created a humanitarian catastrophe in the territory. Israel said 200 aid trucks entered Gaza on Sunday.
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The UN says many people still have no food or cooking fuel and that bakeries aren’t operating, raising concerns about nutrition, especially in northern Gaza, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive.
The war continues to reverberate in the wider Middle East. On Sunday, a chemical tanker linked to an Israeli billionaire was freed by a US warship after armed men boarded the vessel in the Gulf of Aden. While the US military didn’t confirm the identity of the attackers, two missiles were fired at the warship - a destroyer called the USS Mason - shortly afterwards from Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen, according to the US military.
No one on the chemical tanker, called the Central Park and part of Israeli businessman Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group, or the Mason was injured.
The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group based in Yemen, support Hamas and have fired missiles toward Israel in recent weeks. They’ve also threatened Israeli ships and, on Nov. 19, seized a vehicle carrier called the Galaxy Leader in the Red Sea. It’s yet to be released.