Spymasters gather in Qatar

 
It’s day five for the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire that was originally only a four-day agreement. That deal has now been extended to a sixth day on Wednesday to allow more hostages and prisoners to be released.


CIA Director William Burns traveled to Qatar Tuesday in the hopes of hammering out an even wider deal between the two warring factions that could include the release of men and soldiers, beyond only the women and children that the four-day deal involved. 

Israel and Egypt’s intelligence chiefs are in Qatar, too, according to CNN, which notes: “Under the current agreement, three Palestinian prisoners are released for every one hostage that Hamas frees.” And Israeli officials say they’re open to extending the truce one day for every 10 new hostages released.
 
So far, Israel has released 150 detained women and children, and Hamas has released 50 of its 240 or so Israeli hostages taken captive after the group attacked Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,200 Israelis. The Israeli military response—featuring jets and tanks and a ground invasion of Hamas-held Gaza—has killed at least 15,000 Palestinians, 40% of whom are believed to be children, “with many more dead feared to be lost under rubble,” Reuters reported Tuesday.  
 

One of the released Israelis says supplies are dwindling among the remaining captives. At first, they ate “chicken with rice, all sorts of canned food and cheese,” 78-year-old Ruti Munder told Israeli news on Monday. But more recently, “the economic situation was not good, and people were hungry,” she said.

 More than 60% of homes across the Gaza Strip have been destroyed in the Israeli response, according to a United Nations-led aid group (PDF), which called the destruction “so extensive and widespread that there are, at a minimum, serious concerns regarding possible breaches of international humanitarian law.” An estimated 1.8 million people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza, which had a pre-war population of 2.3 million.

 Israel is prepared to continue its ground invasion of Gaza, likely proceeding southward, when the ceasefire lapses, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his U.S. counterpart, President Joe Biden, in a phone call this weekend and in a video message on Sunday.

 “At the end of the deal, we are returning full power to carry out our aims: destroy Hamas, ensure that Gaza won’t return to what it was and of course to free all of our hostages,” said Netanyahu.