War between Israel and Hamas: humanitarian truce extended by two days, Hamas and Qatar announce

The temporary ceasefire will be extended by approximately fifty hours. Hamas and Qatar announced Monday they would extend the truce in Gaza by 48 hours, subject to a new release of hostages held by the Palestinian Islamist movement and prisoners held in Israeli prisons. Israel did not immediately confirm the extension.

Hamas, which came to power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, previously said it was preparing a new list of hostages to be released to extend the truce in fighting with Israel. The first announcement was made a few minutes earlier by Qatar, the mediating country in this agreement. “An agreement has been reached to extend the humanitarian truce for two days in the Gaza Strip,” Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said on Twitter.

Israel has offered the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas an overnight “option” to extend the truce that began Friday and was originally scheduled to end at 7 a.m. Tuesday (6 a.m. in Paris), an Israeli government spokesman said Monday. including the release of another 50 hostages.

A provision in the original agreement allows its extension to release about ten hostages daily held by Hamas in exchange for the release of about thirty Palestinian prisoners. This Sunday, Hamas, which has been in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, said it “seeks to extend the truce” in order to “increase the number of prisoners released.”

The Israeli government is under intense pressure to extend the truce and thus allow the release of more hostages, which is urgently demanded by public opinion traumatized by the Hamas attack. Following US President Joe Biden, the European Union and NATO called on Monday to extend the truce. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the additional respite will allow “more assistance to be provided to populations in need and to secure the release of other hostages.”