By Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman

JERUSALEM — As Israel and Hamas completed the second exchange of hostages and prisoners Saturday (25) evening, Israeli leaders faced a dilemma over whether to restart their military campaign in the Gaza Strip once the four-day truce ends Tuesday (28) morning.

By early Sunday (26) morning, Israel said it had received 13 Israeli hostages — eight children and five women — and four foreign nationals who had been held in Gaza, and had, in turn, released 39 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.

The exchange was the latest part of the agreement that allows for a pause in fighting to be extended. Israel has said it is prepared to grant another day’s pause for every 10 hostages that Hamas releases beyond the 50 outlined in the agreement, but Hamas has not responded to the offer.

“The question is Day 5,” said Alon Pinkas, an Israeli political commentator and former senior diplomat. “Does Israel resume the war?”

An extension that allows for more hostage releases could give further relief to Israelis who see the hostages’ freedom as the country’s biggest immediate priority. That sentiment could spread more widely among Israelis as each day of the cease-fire passes and more hostages are freed.

“And Hamas knows this very well,” said Shira Efron, a senior researcher at Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based political research group. “They’re going to play with Israel and say, ‘Oh, we found another five kids. If you give us another day, there are a few in the north that we can find.’”

But a longer pause could jeopardize the primary goal of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza: the destruction of Hamas, the armed group that led the Oct. 7 raid that killed an estimated 1,200 people in southern Israel and led to the abduction of roughly 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.

If the cease-fire lasts longer than four days, Hamas — which controlled all of the Gaza Strip until Israel invaded it last month — would have more time to regroup, allowing it to mount a fiercer defence when and if Israel renews its military campaign.

An extended cease-fire could also create more opportunities for other countries — particularly the United States — to pressure Israel to scale back its military goals. The Israeli response to the Oct. 7 attack has killed more than 12,000 in Gaza, according to health officials there, leading to rising alarm among Israel’s allies about the conduct of its campaign.

President Joe Biden, speaking Friday (24) in Nantucket, Massachusetts, said “the chances are real” that the pause could open the door to a longer cease-fire.

But even if the United States pushes Israel to end or moderate its military campaign, Israeli leaders could simply ignore the criticism and plough ahead with the invasion.

To end the war now would leave Hamas still in charge of most of Gaza.

And for Israel’s leadership, the war is “all about eradicating and destroying Hamas,” Pinkas said. “So anything less than that is not a win. If Hamas maintains and retains residual political power, then Hamas can claim they won.”

Debate over the future of the war was unfolding as Hamas and Israel indicated they had forged ahead with a second exchange of hostages after an hours-long delay earlier Saturday raised fears that the fragile deal could collapse.

Early Sunday, Israel confirmed that 17 hostages had arrived in Israel from Gaza and that it had released 39 Palestinian prisoners in exchange.

Earlier in the day, Hamas accused Israel of violating the terms of the truce, saying it had not allowed enough aid to reach northern Gaza and had not released Palestinian prisoners according to agreed-upon terms.

Israel denied it had broken the terms of the deal and hinted that the four-day cease-fire would end early if Hamas did not release the second group of hostages. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a spokesperson for the Israeli military, said, “We are standing by our part of the framework.”

Hours later, Qatar, which helped broker the deal alongside Egypt, said that the two mediators had managed to overcome unspecified obstacles that had delayed the exchange. Qatar said that Hamas would release the hostages, and Israel would release the Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas announced that it would move forward with the release of more hostages after Qatar and Egypt passed along Israel’s commitment “to all the conditions detailed in the agreement.” And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with senior security officials late Saturday evening in an effort to ensure that the exchange would go forward as planned, the prime minister’s office said.

On Friday, Hamas released 13 Israeli hostages in return for 39 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Hamas also freed 10 Thai nationals and one Filipino under a separate negotiation Friday.

No Americans were among the hostages released Friday or Saturday. Biden said Friday that his “hope and expectation” was that they would be freed soon.

A Biden administration official, who was not authorized to discuss national security issues and asked not to be named, said Saturday that the White House remained “hopeful” that American hostages would be freed in the “coming days.”

In addition to allowing hostage and prisoner exchanges, the deal has also allowed more aid into Gaza. An Israeli blockade has largely prevented food, water, fuel and medicine from entering, causing a humanitarian crisis for the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there.

On Friday, 196 aid trucks crossed into the enclave, according to Wael Abu Omar, a spokesperson for the territory’s border crossing with Egypt. Another 200 trucks were scheduled to cross into Gaza on Saturday and, of those, 185 had entered by Saturday evening, Omar said.

According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, 59 of those trucks, loaded with food, water, medicine and emergency medical supplies, reached heavily bombarded northern Gaza on Saturday.

The volume of aid was the largest since the conflict began Oct. 7 but still far shy of the 500 daily truckloads that had been entering Gaza before the war. And residents said it was nowhere near what is needed.

Before dawn Saturday, hundreds of people had lined up at a fuel station in the city of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza to fill up canisters of cooking gas, but the supply quickly ran out.

“What aid? We haven’t seen any aid,” said Mohamed Yousef, a 42-year-old employee of a nonprofit, who had waited for gas at 4 a.m. only to find that it was gone.

As prisoners and hostages have been released, Israelis and Palestinians have been watching the reunions with a mix of hope and trepidation.

For many families, joy was tempered by anguish over the fate of the captives still in Gaza.

“We’re happy, but we’re not celebrating,” Roy Zichri said in a video statement after his brother, Ohad Munder Zichri, 9, was freed Friday. “We need to keep up the struggle until all the hostages are freed, every last one,” he added.

In the West Bank, Palestinians celebrated the release Friday of women and children who had been jailed by Israeli authorities. Some praised Hamas, saying the group was responsible for freeing their relatives and neighbours. Others said the death toll in Gaza had cast a pall over the reunions.

“We are unable to celebrate the way we usually do, unfortunately, because of the bloodshed taking place in Gaza,” said Najah Hassan, 50, the head of the nongovernmental organization the Palestinian Prisoners Club in Ramallah.

After the truce went into effect, some displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza tried to walk to the northern part of the territory on Friday to check on their homes or relatives, despite warnings from Israeli officials not to go there. Israeli forces on the ground opened fire on them, according to witnesses, an Egyptian official and some of those injured. The Israeli military declined to answer questions about the shootings.

-New York Times