Israel, Hamas agree to extend truce for two more days

Palestinian children sit by the fire next to the rubble of a house hit in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, November 27, 2023. [Reuters]

Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group, and other allied militants could still be holding up to 175 hostages, enough to potentially extend the cease-fire for two and a half weeks.

But the hostage group includes a number of Israeli soldiers, and the militants could make stiffer demands for their release.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who attended a NATO meeting in Brussels on Monday, will head to Israel and the West Bank late Wednesday, according to a senior State Department official.

Blinken has visited Israel multiple times on his previous two trips to the region since the Israel-Hamas war began.

In his meetings in the Middle East, Blinken "will stress the need to sustain the increased flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, secure the release of all hostages, and improve protections for civilians in Gaza," a senior State Department official said on background.

The White House said in a statement Sunday that Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the release of hostages and discussed the pause in the fighting and the surge in much-needed additional humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip.

In Barcelona, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called the four-day truce an "important first step," but said much more is needed to "alleviate the dire situation in Gaza and to find a way out of the current crisis."

"The pause should be extended to make it sustainable and long-lasting while working for a political solution," he said Monday at the start of a meeting of the Union for the Mediterranean.

Borrell said the "indiscriminate brutality" of the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians cannot be justified but said "one horror cannot justify another horror," noting the widespread destruction in Gaza from Israel's military campaign.

But analysts say this widely welcomed pause is unlikely to bring an end to this complex - and for both sides, existential - conflict.

"There are two separate problems," said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. "The long-term end to the fighting is going to require the dismantlement of Hamas - probably not in any realistic way the complete elimination of all of its fighters or capabilities or ideas - but the top leadership has to go. Hamas' ability to rule Gaza has to go. And I don't see that as having been changed in any way, shape or form by the current pause in the fighting."

China said Monday its top diplomat, Wang Yi, will preside over a Wednesday U.N. Security Council meeting focused on the Israel-Hamas situation.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters that China hopes the talks would lead to a prolonged cease-fire and an end to the fighting, and alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The pause in fighting has allowed an increase in the badly needed humanitarian aid reaching Gaza, where the U.N. says an estimated 1.7 million people - about three-quarters of the population - are displaced.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said late Sunday that cooking gas reached Gaza, but the amount was still well below what people need.

The agency also continued to describe "overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions" at U.N.-run shelters, where half of those forced from their homes by the conflict are staying.