International mediators were pushing on Wednesday to lock in another temporary extension of the cease-fire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, seeing it as the best way to ease the embattled territory’s humanitarian crisis, secure the release of more Israeli captives from Gaza and slow the war’s rocketing death toll for at least a little longer.
But officials with knowledge of the talks said they also hoped that the succession of short-term pauses would pave the way toward a larger goal: negotiations over a longer-term cease-fire to bring the war to a close.
Achieving that is no easy task. Israeli officials have vowed not to stop their military campaign until Hamas’s leadership has been eliminated and the group’s military and governance infrastructure is uprooted from Gaza, objectives that remain far off. And the arrangement that has underpinned the cease-fire so far — the release of hostages from Gaza, nearly all of them women and children, in exchange for the discharge of Palestinian women and minors from Israeli prisons and the entry of more aid into Gaza — is likely to become much trickier when the parties begin negotiating to exchange captured combatants.
Hamas is believed to have captured a few dozen Israeli soldiers during the rampage it led through southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people and saw some 240 dragged into Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli officials. And Israel holds many high-profile Palestinian prisoners, including prominent members of Hamas convicted of grave crimes whose release the group has promised to pursue.
As of Tuesday, Hamas had released at least 85 hostages from Gaza, according to a New York Times tally, and Israel had released 180 Palestinians from its prisons. An additional exchange was expected Wednesday night.
With the cease-fire scheduled to expire on Thursday morning, top officials from Qatar, the United States, Egypt and Israel were meeting in Qatar in talks that were focused on extending it to allow for further exchanges. That formula has succeeded in mostly pausing the war since Friday. Each day, Israelis have watched groups of their hostages return home while Palestinians have seen their detainees released from jail, intense emotional events for each side.
The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, who was scheduled to travel to Israel on Thursday, said the Biden administration wants the truce to continue because it “means that more hostages will be coming home, more assistance will be getting in.”
“Clearly, that’s something we want,” Mr. Blinken told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday. “I believe it’s also something that Israel wants. They’re also intensely focused on bringing their people home.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Israeli official said that 97 women and children had been taken hostage from Israel on Oct. 7, and that if Wednesday’s release goes as planned, 70 of them will have been released. Israel is negotiating in Qatar for an extension of the cease-fire and the release of the remaining 27, the official said.
The official said there were currently no negotiations aimed at a long term cease-fire or an exchange involving all the remaining hostages for all the prisoners.
But two people with knowledge of the talks in Qatar said that beyond yet another short-term extension, the mediators hoped to keep the war on pause for as long as possible to create conditions they hoped would allow for negotiations over a longer-term cease-fire.
One of those sources said the mediators expect that the longer the quiet lasts, the harder it will be for Israel to restart its offensive and extend it to southern Gaza, where senior Hamas leaders are believed to be hiding.
The talks have gained even more urgency because of the death toll and spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Israel’s bombardment of the territory and subsequent ground invasion have leveled entire neighborhoods and killed more than 13,000 people, according to heath authorities in Gaza. More than half of the territory’s 2.2 million Palestinians have been displaced, and the destruction means that many will have no homes to return to after the war ends.
On Wednesday, President Biden appeared to couch his otherwise strong embrace of Israel by suggesting that more fighting would benefit Hamas.
“Hamas unleashed a terrorist attack because they fear nothing more than Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace,” Mr. Biden said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “To continue down the path of terror, violence, killing and war is to give Hamas what they seek. We can’t do that.”
Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Michael Crowley from Brussels.