Today is the fifth day of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners being released.

What do we know about who was released by Hamas today and the process by which they are continuing to be selected?

So the releases have been happening, especially in batches of about roughly ten.

They've been prioritizing largely women and children and not counting those who are military aged males or those who are in active military service.

So Hamas is essentially drawing a distinction between those that it sees as very clearly noncombatants and those that are combatants or potential combatants.

They've been doing this in batches of about ten.

And the agreement is that this will happen essentially alongside Palestinian prisoner releases done by Israel.

And then for every day that this sort of trade happens, they'll get an extra couple of days of cease fire.

Just yesterday, it was announced will be two extra days of the cease fire while this kind of trade of about roughly ten to 11 to 12 hostages per day are released and roughly 100 to 150 Palestinian prisoners are released as well.

Let's talk about the American hostages being held.

President Biden confirmed there are nine.

One of them is from ten of Tenafly New Jersey, Edan Alexander.

What do we know about the Americans possibly being released?

Alexander himself was an IDF soldier.

Doesn't look, as you said that those are anywhere on the list of being released, although the US government is urging for their release.

What do we know?

The President Biden has made it a top priority to get American citizens out of losses, custody and understandably so.

Part of the issue is number one, who is holding them.

So Hamas is holding all of the hostages, but they have different cells of Hamas, different organizational units within it.

And there are also stories coming out.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other organizations also hold some hostages.

So it's a coordination game on their side as well to figure out where the hostages are and who they are going to release.

What I understand, the CIA director is currently meeting with Qatar and a number of other representatives in an attempt to get all of the American hostages released before there would be a resumption of the war.

But it's unclear whether that's going to happen.

And if there's a sticking point, it's very likely to be, again, military males, which might seem to be setting aside and saying they're not willing to consider releasing in this batch of hostage releases in support of the cease fire.

You mentioned that this pause in fighting has been extended, waited for an additional two days.

What do we know about the impact that that has on Hamas, on their ability to reorganize, regroup militarily?

The U.S. government is very clear about this, as a matter of fact, Jake Sullivan pointed out the other day, their security adviser pointing out the other day that this break and fighting is going to allow Hamas to rearm, is going to allow Hamas to get fuel to reorganize, and defend itself.

And so you have to assume it has a strategic consequence.

The argument that the U.S. is making is, although this may give a pause, it, in fact, actually helps Hamas if it gets more hostages out of harm's way, it's probably a net benefit.

And so we have to assume that Hamas is going to come back, possibly strengthened with a very minimal refreshed and possibly with fuel, ammunition and so on.

Things that it's giving in is that can massively change the strategic balance.

I don't think so, but it is likely to give them essentially a breathing space.

Well, the U.S. government, I mean, Israel has made it clear that when the exchange and that they will continue to fight, they will continue to attack Gaza and Hamas.

The US government is urging that they take a more targeted strategic approach to that attack.

What impact does that U.S. warning have on Israel?

Does it change their military strategy?

A good question.

So the U.S. essentially has been trying to quietly lobby Israel to say, look, after you come back from the cease fire and the assumption Israel's been very clear that the war will continue once the cease fire stops.

So once they get as many hostages as they think they can get out at that point, the war will then continue and it will go to the south.

The US is also trying to explore what kind of leverage it has to persuade Israel to take a very specific, targeted and much more limited approach because the political cost of this are growing.

Absolutely.

Michael Boyle, associate professor of political science at Rutgers.

Camden, thank you with great insight.

Thank you.