thanksgiving. >> have a great holiday. >> you too, and enjoy your mother is delicious, reportedly delicious thanksgiving stuffing. >> it's the best! >> see you. >> thanks to you at home for joining me this hour. after 47 days of fighting, 47 days of israeli hostages held in captivity, israel and hamas have agreed to a four-day pause in fighting in exchange for the release of 50 hostages. the timing of it all may still be an open question. now the deal was brokered by qatar, egypt, and the united states. and it was also supposed to start by 3 am eastern time tonight. but israeli officials are now saying that the release of hostages will not happen before friday. what that means for the timing of the temporary cease-fire is unclear. the new york times reports that the cease-fire may also be delayed until friday. but nbc news has not confirmed this. the deal itself involves the release of 50 civilian women and children currently held by hamas. the release of 150 palestinian women and children currently held in israeli jails. and the delivery of more humanitarian aid to gaza. u.s. officials have warned that we won't know for sure which hostages will be released until they are actually released. but national security adviser jake sullivan told nbc news today that three americans should be part of this initial group of 50. two women and child. the hostages will be released in four phases, one group for each day the fighting is paused. around ten hostages are expected to be freed every day over the course of four days beginning on friday. now, there is an option for this system of cease-fire and release to go on as long as ten days. an additional ten hostages would be released for each day that there is a pause in fighting. so today is a hopeful day. but it is also the start of a week filled with anxiety, as family members of hostages way to see if their loved ones will be among those released. >> it's been so long. we have been stuck on october 7th for 45 days. looping this in our minds over and over again. and just to have a sliver of hope, just a break already. just a break. >> no information, i'm very nervous and frustrated and i'm waiting for news. i want to just good news. i don't want any bad news anymore. >> one side, i'm happy. second, i'm worried. okay? because nobody told me that my family will be in this deal. okay? there was 40 children inside gaza and they are only going to release 30. where the others? i don't know. >> american officials cannot confirm which hostages will be released. though, certain family members like the loved one -- american hostage herschel brick poland, they already believe their loved ones are not likely to be among these first 50 released. goldberg is a young man, and the deal struck today is limited to women and children. instead, his mother had another demand. videos of the october 7th attack show that her son was severely injured. half of his left arm was blown off by a grenade. here was his mother's plea today. >> i am not counting hostages being freed in this deal until i see them walk over the border and be embraced safely. and then, god willing, these 50 hostages are released and still lose a another hundred 90 hostages that need to be released. and in the meantime, we would like the international red cross or any other humanitarian aid organization on planet earth to go and see every single hostage and let us know, are they alive? have they've been treated? are they getting the care that they need? >> hours after that plea, prime minister netanyahu announced that as part of the deal, the red cross will get to visit unreleased hostages to provide care. that detail was negotiated so secretly, and at the last minute, that the red cross put out a statement saying that the organization itself only learned of this development from netanyahu's remarks. the red cross followed up by saying that it stands ready to conduct visits whenever it is allowed. as the details of this highly choreographed exchange of 50 hostages are ironed out, the hope here is that this will be the start of a process that could return all of the hostages still inside gaza. but keeping these negotiations on track is a delicate balance, and a tense one. the situation is equally tense inside gaza tonight. i will warn you, some of the images we are about to show you our unsettling. so if you would like to turn away now, this is the time to do so. this is a video of a mass grave being dug today in khan yunis in the southern half of gaza. more than 100 people were buried there anonymously today. part of the 14,000 who have died since the beginning of this conflict. that is according to the hamas-run gaza media office. that number includes more than 5000 children. and the fighting in gaza has not yet stopped, it is expected to continue right up until that pause. whether that is at 3 am eastern tonight, or later in the week. one of the details that has still not yet been confirmed here in this agreement is how much aid gets into gaza and to quickly. maybe the most contentious and desperately needed aid in gaza right now is fuel. this is a video from yesterday of internally displaced gazans pushing past each other and essentially breaking apart an aid truck. they were looking for water. according to the united nations, around 70% of gazans or jury drinking selenide and contaminated water. without, fuel they have an eye on able to power dissemination plants, water pumps, and sewage pumps. leaving more than 1 million people without clean drinking water or sanitary living conditions. and then there are glasses hospitals. because of the lack of fuel, this week the world health organization said that critical trauma care is no longer possible at any of gaza's hospitals. that includes care for premature babies and neonatal intensive care units, or nikki use as they are called. after the weekend -- evaluated 31 of 36 and icu rabies from the al-shifa hospital in northern gaza. the u.n. reports of the other five babies died due to a lack of electricity and fuel. all 31 of the evacuate babies have serious infections. one of them is on a ventilator. the world health organization warns that even though this proof of babies made it out, over 180 women give birth every day in gaza. so the need for care like this will not go away. not to mention the need to care for the tens of thousands of other wounded cousins, which would also require fuel. now, allowing more fuel into gaza is an explicit part in this deal. but how much of it and how quickly it gets in, that is all unclear. the broad strokes of this dealer in place. but that is just a step one. all of the details here are important. many of them are matters of life and death. and many of them are still being worked out as we speak. joining me now is ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser for president obama. and co-host of the podcast pod save the world. ben, thank you so much for being here, my friend. i want to get right to the question of the hostages. there is been a lot of reporting on how this deal kind of came together. but buried in that reporting is this reality. and i am quoting from david ignatius reporting in the washington post. though the captains have often been described as being under in tire hamas control, and israeli official told me that of a total of about 100 israeli women and children, including toddlers and babies, hamas had immediate access to only the 50 who will be released. ben, in your eyes, how complicated and how problematic is it if the reality is that hamas only actually knows about and is in control of a fraction of these approximately 250 hostages that are inside gaza? >> yeah, alex, it's tough to think about all the complexity that goes into. this first, of all the negotiations were taking place through qatar, the qatari government. which has hosted hamas political offices in doha. those political leaders then are in touch with hamas leaders on the ground in gaza. and you have a situation where these hostages were taken in a chaotic and awful violent circumstance, where there are other groups operating in addition to hamas, palestinian islamic jihad, apparently took some of these hostages as well. and over the course of the last 45 days, you have had a war zone. you have had a bombardment of gaza. so just think of how complicated it is to identify where these people are, who is holding, them who has the authority to move them. who is in communication up through the hamas train of command to qatar, to the united states. this is a very complicated multifaceted negotiation, and now that there is an agreement in place, and everyone seems committed to following through on this deal, now it is the additional work that has to be done to find these people and to colocate them and to bring them to safety and figure out how to transfer them to israeli custody. so it is not a surprise to me that this might take a couple of days in order to just begin these releases. i think tragically and painfully, but also suggests how hard it is gonna be to continue to find additional hostages to release, assuming you can keep this deal going and go beyond the 50 they're slated to release in the next several. >> days, yes just to that, and then, when you talk about the logistical difficulties. i wonder if there's further complexity between the desires of some of the jihadist groups that may have these hostages. apparently there are just families inside gaza that are holding to some of these hostages. and hamas. would you assume that these groups are effectively standing shoulder to shoulder with whatever hamas is negotiating with the israelis via qatar? or could there be separate demands on their behalf? >> you know, none of us know. i mean, i think we have to start for the premise that nobody knows exactly what is going on here. i would think though, alex, that you have a situation where hamas, with command and control, has a certain number of these hostages. then beyond that, there may be other elements, factions like islamic jihad, that may want to hold onto hostages for their own leverage. or there may even be, there are some reports that they are just criminal elements who just want to hold hostages for ransom. and then it may just be in the chaos of war that some of these hostages are among the population there, trying to find shelter as well. so it is a complicated endeavor. i think what you are trying to do in any diplomacy's test whether the other party can deliver on what they say. it will be an important test of hamas's capacity to deliver on their own commitments, to see if they can follow through on ten hostages a day. and that might at least give you confidence that you have a mechanism set up to try to secure additional relief is going forward. >> yes, to that end, how optimistic are you that this agreement could last beyond the initial four days and 50 hostages? and when i -- as a sort of the addendum to that, i just want to read this excerpt in the new york times that details how difficult it was to get to this point. on november 14th, there's a sense that this detail is gonna come together, netanyahu calls president biden to say that he can accept hamas's offer. but just hours after the call, the idf storms al-shifa hospital in gaza and suddenly communications between hamas and all the other official parties go silent. and one hamas resurfaces hours later, they made clear the deal was off. i mean, israel has been very clear that it would like this were to continue. on the eve of the deal initially, potentially being agreed upon, they go ahead and raid al-shifa hospital. for their strategic and, according to israel. but i just wonder what that indicates to -- israel's appetite to keep a cease-fire going, even if it could mean the release of hostages every day. >> you know, i think it's a really important question, alex. first of all, i want to say something. clearly, as someone who had to deal in government with hostage situations, in difficult circumstances, and none frankly as difficult as gaza, this densely populated area with 2 million people. most of whom are displaced. probably most of whom are homeless right now. the reality is that it's going to be much easier to secure their strafe release through diplomacy, then through military operations. that is just a fact. and so there is like a discordance between the objective of sustaining a ground operation, and this kind of bombardment that we have seen of gaza. trying to secure the safety of these hostages. and i think the u.s. has really been trying to press the israeli government to take into account the fact that it is easier to get the hostages out through negotiation, there was also pressure with the israeli government to put more of a focus between the hostages and the military operation itself. now, for netanyahu we know he attacks. right we also know he has some right-wing members of his own government who really don't want to see this military operation falls. who have much more maximalist objectives in mind in gaza. and they are going to be putting pressure on him to show that the military operation is going to resume. now, i think it will be countervailing pressure, alex. because the world is looking in horror at the same images that you showed today. over 5000 children have been killed, you have a siege mentality. you have, as you pointed out, the capacity for what urban illnesses. if you are not getting water and fuel in, it could lead to many deaths. not through violence, but through those kind of water borne illnesses. so the idea of pausing this for several days, and just picking right up where we were. i think that that is a cause of a significant international blowback. and frankly, from within the united states. some concern about where is this ongoing? >> yeah -- >> i think the best-case scenario see try to stand this policy and get more hostages and you see if you have diplomacy to the escalate the conflict. >> can we just talk really quickly about that diplomacy, the times has a quote from some senior american officials who signal that they would not be disappointed if the pause became a more permanent cease-fire. is that the administration's best route to actually calling for a cease-fire. i mean it is very clear that president biden was intimately involved in these negotiations, according to the new york times he is the one the pressured prime minister netanyahu to take the deal. as it currently stands. does the biden administration not have more leverage here if indeed they actually would not be disappointed in the cease-fire happened? >> i think they do. they have diplomatic leverage in the sense that if they start taking a position that is calling for a cease-fire, calling for de-escalation, that makes it harder for israel to sustain its operations, again, the international pressure that they're facing. i think the other reality, alex, is where is this all going? you think about at the beginning, president biden wrapped his arms around prime minister netanyahu in full solidarity. we know that is where the start is. we know that there is major disagreement between the u.s. and as real about when this and. the israel said that the palestinian authority will take command, control or responsibility for gaza. there are proposals about a air piecing keeping force. now who said, will have to sustain security responsibility and some kind of administrative control over gaza for an open-ended period of time. that is a huge gap. the question is, how long does the military operation go. what is the end goal? is the end goal to have a palestinian government authority in gaza, that people can turn to their homes to be rebuilt. or is the angle the de facto israel occupation? i think the sooner you begin to address this questions, alex, the better, and i think a pause is a good time to address those questions. look, we share your objective of dislodging hamas, but what is happening now is a humanitarian catastrophe that is causing a lot of international tension and, frankly, hamas's political leadership, some of it out of the country, hamas probably blended in with the civilian population, over 1 million people push often gaza. the ability to go one by one and eliminate hamas in that kind of environment is very difficult for a significant loss of life. the administration wants to put forward these questions now about what is the objective? where is this going? how do we minimize civilian casualties, how do we make sure that aid gets in so that this is not become a worse crisis, and how do we address hamas militarily but political strategy that replaces that with some alternative palestinian leadership? >> ben rhodes, asking the questions that we do not yet have answers to. thank, you my friend, for your time and was this evening. >> thanks, alex. >> coming up, the decline and fall, may be, of the desantis campaign, after spending 100 million dollars and falling to fifth place in polling. the game begins a desantis ruled. but first, trump talks and talk some more. today, we kind of day on the sheer number of threats unleashed on the subjects of donald trump's verbal tax. we'll have more on that next. l tax. we'll have more on that next >> (pensive music) (footsteps crunching) (pensive music) (birds tweeting) (pensive music) (broom sweeping) - [narrator] one in five children worldwide are faced with the reality of living without food. no family dinners, no special treats, no full bellies. all around the world, parents are struggling to feed their children. toddlers are suffering from acute malnutrition, which stunts their growth. kids are forced to drop out of school so they can help support their families. covid, conflict, inflation and climate have ignited the worst famine in our lifetime. and we're fed up. fed up with the fact that hunger robs children of their childhood. fed up with the lack of progress. fed up with the injustice. help us brighten the lives of children all over the world by visiting getfedupnow.org. for as little as $10 a month, you can join save the children as we support children and families in desperate need of our help. now is the time to get fed up and give back. when you join the cause, your $10 monthly donation can help communities in need of life-saving treatments and nutrients, prevent children from dropping out of school. support our work with communities and governments to help children go from short-term surviving to long-term thriving. and now thanks to special government grants, every dollar you give before december 31st can multiply up to 10 times the impact. that means more food, water, medicine and help for kids around the world. you'll also receive a free tote bag to share your support for children in need. childhood without food is unimaginable. get fed up. call us now or visit getfedupnow.org today. at bombas, we're obsessed with comfort. quality. movement. because your basic things should be your best things. one purchased equals one donated. visit bombas.com and shop our big holiday sale. 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