• Israel approves a four-day truce with Hamas in exchange for the release of 50 hostages
  • Middle East Storming Hamas's lethal stronghold

If there are no last-minute unforeseen events - in these lands nothing is less foreseen than an unforeseen event - Israel and the fundamentalist group Hamas begin a four-day truce on Thursday with the option of extending it depending on the expansion of the list of Israeli hostages who can return to their homes. Not all of the 239 in the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad after being kidnapped on October 7, but perhaps not only the 50 agreed in the agreement sewn between bombs, evacuations, accusations and threats by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

As bombing and fighting intensified in the Gaza Strip and Israel and Hamas confirmed 2006 a.m. as the time the ceasefire came into effect, the pro-Iranian Lebanese group Hezbollah said it was adding to the calm in the face of its great enemy on a border that has experienced the most explosive month since the <> war.

Mossad chief David Barnea was in Qatar to oversee the details of a complex and unprecedented arrangement in the region and receive the first list of chosen hostages. After 48 days of traumatic captivity, the gradual process of releasing 30 children and 20 women (eight are their mothers) will begin in a first batch of the four scheduled until Sunday. The ceasefire window could remain open beyond the agreed four days (it depends on the parties and mediators) but it could also be closed much earlier (depending on the tunnel-filled front line).

In exchange for the return of dozens of its own, Israel will suspend massive military pressure on Gaza and release at least 150 Palestinian prisoners – including dozens of children under the age of 18 and women – convicted of belonging to a terrorist group, inciting violence, attacks or attempted attacks. Israeli authorities released the list of 300 prisoners likely to be released if Hamas releases more children and women. The established ratio is three Palestinians for every Israeli. 19 of them were convicted of attempted murder, including a 14-year-old Palestinian woman who seriously injured an Israeli woman living in the same neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Or Israa Jaabis, sentenced to eleven years in prison for detonating a gas canister at a police post, injuring an officer in 2015. As was expected in a case of strategic importance, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal against his release filed by an association of victims of terrorism.

The dramatic day will begin somewhere in the Palestinian enclave when Hamas transfers 10 Israelis to Egypt amid great secrecy and mistrust. It will do so by taking advantage of the time slot between 10 a.m. and 16 p.m. in which Israel cannot activate reconnaissance drones. At the Rafah border crossing, the International Red Cross will receive children and women who will be passed to Israeli soldiers, including doctors. At that point, the army will cease its attacks by pausing the response to "Black Saturday" to "destroy Hamas and return the hostages" in an offensive that has caused thousands of deaths - among civilians and militiamen - and destruction in the Gaza Strip.

Several Israeli hospitals are prepared to receive the abductees on a health, nutritional, psychological and social level. That will be when the long-awaited meeting with their families will take place, who until hours before did not know if they were finally going to see them. And the children don't know that some of their relatives did not survive the Hamas pogrom in the kibbutzim.

The fact that 190 Israelis and others remain in Gaza is one of the most frequent criticisms among Israel's opponents of the deal, beyond their fear that four days later it will be more difficult to resume the operation. In this regard, the Israeli media point out that Hamas will do everything possible at the media level to increase international pressure. From Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority calls for "the total cessation of Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and the entry of humanitarian aid."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified that it is only a pause now to save hostages and that the war will continue "until Hamas is finished, all the hostages are returned and Gaza cannot threaten us again." Israel's hope is to increase both the number of hostages released to more than 80 under the agreement and the alert of its soldiers. No one forgets what happened in the 2014 war when, after the announcement of a truce, a Hamas commando killed three soldiers who were looking for tunnels.

Hamas' hope, for its part, is to increase the number of days of truce considering that in recent weeks, it has lost numerous troops and infrastructure, especially in northern Gaza under partial army control. For Hamas leader Yahia Sinwar, the hostages can give him more hours of ceasefire in the hope that they will be part of his lifeline at the group (armed wing), governmental (control of Gaza) and personal (his head is the most requested by Israel).

The hope of the Gaza Strip, where two-thirds of its inhabitants fled their homes during the offensive, is that the humanitarian pause will become a final truce. For the time being, it will receive more fuel and humanitarian aid. According to Islamist spokesman Taher Al Nunu, "as part of the agreement, between 200 and 300 trucks of humanitarian aid to northern and southern Gaza, including eight with fuel."

Until calm returns to the area on Thursday, the Israeli army is intensifying its air strikes and ground advances to shield its defenses during the truce. In the last day, the Hamas government denounced the death of dozens of people and the siege of hospitals while Israel announced dozens of Hamas militants killed and showed a video inside the network of tunnels under the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to return to the area in a few days with several goals summarized in 4 no's: not to allow Hamas to continue as a government and armed group, not to let Gaza fall into a humanitarian crisis, not to increase the civilian death toll and not to extend the war to Lebanon and other areas of the Middle East.

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