Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said Sunday evening that the release of more hostages in exchange for an extension would be “welcome.” The current deal dictates that the pause could be extended by one day for every 10 additional Israeli hostages released.
Netanyahu, however, promised to continue the war after the agreement expires, repeating his vow to eliminate Hamas after its Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed 1,200. “We will go back 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,” he said in a video statement.
The pause in fighting is likely to be extended for two more days, according to Diaa Rashwan, the head of Egypt’s State Information Service. In a statement, he said 11 Israelis and 33 Palestinians were set to be released Monday with discussions ongoing about further releases.
The truce deal, mediated by Qatar, had stipulated a four-day pause in hostilities and the entry of hundreds of trucks into Gaza for humanitarian relief, medical and fuel aid. It also dictated that 50 Israeli hostages, which includes dual citizens, would be released by Hamas in exchange for 150 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said in a statement Sunday that the distribution of aid in southern Gaza had picked up during the first three days of the pause in fighting and fuel for operating generators was being supplied to hospitals, shelters, water desalination plants and pumping stations.
The north, where the fighting and bombardment has been vastly more intense, has received a total of 150 trucks containing food, water, milk for infants and relief goods, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said. The water delivery was the first to shelters since Oct. 7, said OCHA, which has been expressing concerns about dehydration and waterborne diseases in the Gaza Strip after the water desalination plant and Israeli pipeline supplying water to the north stopped functioning.
The pause was an “important step” but much more is needed to “alleviate the dire situation in Gaza and find a way out of this crisis,” said E.U. foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. Speaking at the Forum for the Union of the Mediterranean in Barcelona, he said the pause should be extended and work must take place to reach a political solution that would “allow us to break the cycle of violence once and for all.”
“One horror cannot justify another horror,” he said. “The way Israel exercises its right to defense matters.”
By Monday, 40 Israelis, 18 Thai and Philippine nationals and 117 Palestinians had been released, with the remainder expected to be released Monday night, but snags appeared to slow down the process.
“There is a slight issue with today’s lists,” said an official briefed on negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing talks. “The Qataris are working with both sides to resolve it and avoid delays.”
“Discussions are being held on the list that was received overnight and which is now being evaluated in Israel,” a statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “Additional information will be issued when possible.”
In Gaza, footage on Al Jazeera showed glimpses of life after the respite in fighting. People lined up in the rain to fill up yellow and blue water gallons. In the city of Deir al-Balah, throngs of men and women descended on open-air markets, vying for limited wares, buying greens from trucks or dried goods on the side of the road. Some families returned to the homes from which they had fled and sat among the rubble that had once been their bedroom walls and kitchen floors, sipping coffee and tea.
Hussam Qidra, a Gaza resident, said he left his house in Gaza City a week before the pause and returned when the pause went into effect. Gaza City in the north has borne the brunt of the bombardments and ground fighting, driving many inhabitants to flee south — until it became too intense to even leave home.
Qidra was one of those who found themselves trapped, surrounded by gunfire. “My brothers are in the south and they are suffering too, no point in going south, no safe place anywhere.” He said the city was littered with dead bodies in the street. Some people come to take them away in donkey carts. “Most of the streets are bulldozed, no life in the city.”
He said the main produce available in the market was tomatoes, sold at more than six times their usual price, while the price of water has increased fivefold. “Luckily I stored up some food, mainly cans, and I’m okay on a personal level,” he said. Today, he said, he and his family are having canned white beans for their meal.
If the truce ends on Tuesday, Qidra said he is still not planning to leave the house. “I’d die anywhere, in Gaza City or the south, bombardment is everywhere,” he said. He knew many people who were killed in the south, some while trying to flee, he added.
The Ministry of Health had hoped a pause in hostilities would allow it to update its tally of the dead, which stood at an incomplete count of over 13,300. But those hopes were dashed as more and more bodies kept being discovered under the overwhelming mounds of rubble. On Sunday, the ministry urged Gazans to use its toll-free number to report any relatives missing or trapped under rubble.
The Civil Defense’s plan to extract bodies was hindered by a lack of equipment and tools, as well as fuel for excavators — no fuel has reached northern Gaza so far. Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the organization, told The Post that with help from municipalities, they had removed around 150 bodies lying on the streets of Gaza City and elsewhere in the north.
“At present, the Civil Defense’s only feasible task, given the current situation, is firefighting,” he said. Two-thirds of civil defense equipment is out of service, he added.
During the pause, the extent of destruction became evident, with entire areas, such as the al-Sabra neighborhood in Gaza City, “completely removed and destroyed,” he said. “Gaza City has regressed 50 years and is currently unfit for living.” When the war is over, he continued, people will struggle to find a place or infrastructure to live in.
Shaima Miqdad, 37, told The Post that in the hours before the truce went into effect on Friday, her aunt’s family home in Gaza City was bombarded, killing her and 15 members of her extended family. The sole relative who survived, a 30-year-old doctor, clawed his way out of the shattered concrete.
“We did not know that they were killed” for days, she said, due to a communication outage across the enclave. Only when the guns fell silent were relatives and neighbors able to extract the bodies of her aunt and some of her children. On Sunday, they found the bodies of a few other children. “But we have no information about the rest,” Miqdad said. “We hope that the promises that the [truce] can be extended will be true, at least so we can bury our martyrs and extract the rest of them.”
Dadouch reported from Beirut, Harb from London, Berger from Jerusalem. Heba Mahfouz in Cairo, Susannah George in Doha, Niha Masih in Seoul, Claire Parker in Jerusalem and Jennifer Hassan in London contributed to this report.
