they are being overseen by the red cross. further releases will occur across a four-day ceasefire that began around midnight eastern time. in total, hamas is expected to release 50 hostages while israel is expected to release 150 prisoners. israel has also said it would extend the ceasefire by an additional day for every ten addion hostages releas. despite these developments, both sides have made it clear the fighting is far from over. joining us live from tel aviv is erin mclaughlin. it is now the time where these hostages are supposed to be released. what's the latest? >> reporter: we have yet to receive any official word that the process has begun. we are hearing from the egyptian state information service providing more clarity in terms of the hostages expected to be released today. according to egyptian state information, 12 thai nationals will also be released in addition to the 13 israeli hostages, women and children. we're also hearing from a senior white house official that americans are not expected to be among the 13 israeli hostages released today. that would include 3-year-old abigail moore adan. we know that a list of the hostages expected to be released has been provided to israeli officials. israeli officials have also provided the palestinians with the names of the palestinians expected to be released today from israeli jails. but the israeli officials are not making the list of hostages public, because hamas is seen to be unreliable, though we understand they have notified all the families about the current situation. >> what's the sense to when the next batch of hostages and prisoners will be swapped? we've lost erin's audio there. we appreciate her being with us and we'll check back in with her throughout the morning. joining us onset is david rhodes. i'll put that question to you. what do we know about the next batch? also talk to us about how tricky this is. >> there is a diplomat involved in negotiations from the region that said to us that there was zero trust between both sides when these talks started. it was an excruciating process that went on for five weeks. it is very delicate. the fact that the international red cross is involved in terms of picking up the palestinians released in the west bank is a positive sign. but the real moment of truth will be when these 13 hostages are finally in israeli custody. again, this diplomat said that he thinks both sides will abide by this agreement and it will go forward. again, it's going to be 50 hostages released from hamas and israel will release 150 palestinian prisoners. i think it will be small groups over each of the next four days. >> what do you think it does for israeli resolve for the campaign going forward? >> there was a public opinion poll taken in israel recently. almost half of israelis said they disagreed with prisoner swaps. that's a massive change in israeli society that shows how horrific the october 7th attack was, the murder of 1200 civilians, 240 hostages being taken. israelis are determined to continue the military campaign against hamas. there's also a great loyalty to bring prisoners home. 1,000 prisoners were released for one israeli soldier in the past. i was taken hostage 40 years ago. i think people may question that deal. >> let's talk about the role the united states has played in all of this. qatar has also been involved. subtle pressure perhaps from the u.s. behind the scenes. tell us more about it. >> this is a critical thing for president biden. frankly, his approval numbers have dropped. there was a split in the democratic party that biden had become too close to the israelis. the literal hug with netanyahu was too much. if biden can be given credit for this ceasefire and for hostages being released, he can argue this shows his strategy worked, that going to israel immediately and supporting netanyahu is paying off with the ceasefire and with the release of these hostages. >> stay with us. ahead of that planned hostage release, israeli ground troops and air strikes slammed northern gaza yesterda numerous clashes were reported in the area, whichsraeli officials have deemed a hamas stronghold. the israeli military said it discovered combat equipment. the israeli military released video of what it claims is a tunnel below the al shifa hospital in gaza city. the hospital has been a frequent target of the idf as it claims a hamas command center sits underneath the building. this video released by israel's military would suggest nearby buildings also used some sort of tunnel system. as evacuations out of that hospital continue, the israeli military has detained the hospital's director for questioning. the idf is alleging that under the director's management, the hospital indeed served as a ceer. command and control the "new york times" is reporting that hamas, health officials from gaza and the hospital director all deny the claims and accuse israel of anting evidence. let's get your read on this. there is zero trust between these two sides. >> absolutely. there's also an information war going on here. hamas wants to constantly talk about the casualties. the palestinian side, according to the health department in gaza, which is controlled by hamas, 14,000 palestinians have died, as many as 5,000 palestinian children. the "new york times" as of yesterday was reporting there was no definitive evidence yet of a command center. president biden himself in his statements after he met with president xi of china said hamas had a headquarters under al shifa hospital. we'll see what happens. under international law, the hospital had to be used for military means and the only way they could take a hospital by force is if it's preventing them from achieving a military objective. it is important for israel to show there's a command center under the hospital. so far there's a dormitory, bathrooms under the hospital, but not a headquarters. maybe it's semantics, but i think more videos will come out of these tunnels and we'll see if the idf overstated the headquarters under the hospital. >> we remember that other hospital explosion in the early days of this conflict where it didn't matter what the facts were. people just ran with their own narrative. david, you mentioned your own experience being held hostage. tell us a little bit about what you think the psychological status is of those hostages who are not coming out today. >> they are, you know, terrified, but they also have each other. i know this might sound strange, but i was kidnapped with two afghan journalists and we had each other throughout that experience. the sad thing is it's so large. they at least have each other, but they just don't know. for viewers, the interest analogy is they were taken captive but you're diagnosed with cancer. average americans go through this every day. you're faced with your own mortality, but you get through it. any support you can get helps you. this could be and should be a joyous day for the families to have of the 13 expected to come out. >> lastly, what's the latest sense as to how many americans are being held and when they might be released? >> there's ten total. hopefully they will all come out in the next four days. it's clearly a priority for the united states. i want to note one thing that our colleagues discovered in their reporting. hamas has consistently said that they only control about 120 of these prisoners, that most of them are soldiers, about 70, and there's another 50 women and children. the total number that are believed to be hostages, according to israel, is around 240. who controls those other hostages? there's 100 of them that are unaccounted for. are they dead in bomb strikes? that's a huge problem. as this process goes forward and as 50 are released and maybe another group, we're not going to get to 240. that's a huge problem as this process goes forward. >> there's some other splinter terror groups who have some of them and it's not clear. >> this situation is entirely hamas' responsibility. they chose to carry out that attack on october 7th. that created the chaos. maybe there were civilians who went through the border barrier and grabbed hostages. maybe islamic jihad grabbed some. it is hamas' responsibility to find these hostages. still ahead, we'll continue to bring you the latest developments in the hostage release. plus, we'll have new reporting about the pressure that president biden put on israel's prime minister to get this deal done. we'll be right back on this friday morning. we'll be right back on this friday morning he hits his mark —center stage—and is crushed by a baby grand piano. you're replacing me? customize and save with liberty bibberty. he doesn't even have a mustache. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ new reporting from nbc news highlights the significant role that the united states has played in the israel/hamas hostage negotiations. american efforts to secure the release of those taken ban just hours after the october 7th attack by hamas. according to a senior israeli vernment official, prime minister netanyahu was reluctant at first to agree to the negotiations with hamas, ultimately bowing to significant pressure from president biden himself. quote, this deal was a biden deal, not a netanyahu deal. that external pressure from the united states and the internal pressure from israelis at home, particularly those family members of hostages, were more than netanyahu could bear. joining us is paul beckett from the "wall street journal." tell us more about what we know about this significant back channelling by u.s. officials to israel, hamas, qatar and other officials in the region. >> our reporting suggest that is the biden administration played a big role right up to president biden himself in making some key calls, both to israel and to qatar, which has positioned itself as an intermediary here. egypt was helping as well. the u.s. certainly played a hugely significant role, but it took a lot of countries to make this happen. >> certainly it seems this is a moment where some bad actors, if you will, are seemingly emboldened globally, obviously what hamas did. the war in ukraine continues. china continues to make threatening noise about taiwan. north korea continues to test their weapon systems. what's your assessment as to the message that the biden administration and the west has been able to say to those rogue nations? >> i think where the biden administration tries to distinguish itself is in building up alliances that would counter those individual country moves. you've seen a big emphasis on nato and western democracies coming to the u.s. side. if you were to ask the white house, it would say one to have biden achievements has been to pull a group of like-minded democracies together in a battle against rising autocracy. i think that's what they would point to as their contribution in what is an increasingly dangerous world. >> we wanted to make sure we had you on today because december 4th would be the 250th day that your "wall street journal" colleague evan gershkovich has been detained in russia. the "wall street journal" recently launched an initiative to pressure u.s. officials to continue to try to secure his release. tell us about the campaign, what you're hoping to do here and if you have any updates at all as to how evan is doing and the state of his detention. >> before december 4th, sometime next week his latest pretrial detention will expire. we assume there will be another hearings. we assume the russian court will decide to keep him in detention for at least another three months. sometime next year we assume he will go to trial on this false charge. it's quite opaque, but there's something of a timeline we can look at here. it's really our responsibility to evan, to his family, to his journal colleagues and to the public that cares about press freedom to do everything we can to ensure his release. we've been asked a lot the extent to which the situation in the middle east may have distracted the administration. we are told that is not the case, but you can see from today that even the most intractable hostage problems can be solved. we're very much hoping that the biden administration will live up to the promise to evan's parents to get evan home. in the meantime, we are grateful for the support. we appreciate everybody contributing to our awareness campaign, especially through social media with the hashtag i stand with evan. >> tell us a little bit more about that point you just made. we have chronicled all morning long about how difficult it was for israel and hamas to get to this point, but the exchanges are hoping. does that give you hope that as intractable the situation is in russia, the same can be said for evan? >> of course we maintain hope. we would like to see it resolved. i think it would be a great thing for to send a message of the safety around importance of reporters around the world bringing us this vital knowledge. we wouldn't know about the hostage deal happening in the middle east right now if it wasn't for the reporters on the ground who put themselves in harm's way all the time. evan is one case of that where he was taken in russia march 29th. but this happens every day around the world. protecting those journalists as they do their job is of such vital importance. >> we should note the journalists killed in the middle east covering the conflict there. paul beckett, thank you for joining us. >> thank you so much for your support. >> we'll continue to keep evan in the headlines. let's turn to other news from overseas. in dublin, a knife attack that seriously injured a 5-year-old girl and hospitalized a teacher and two other young children yesterday. a man was detained, but a small group of anti-immigrant protesters arrived and clashed with police, leading to a riot. police say ty have arrested dozens of people related to the riot so far. elsewhere, hospitals in northern china are grappling with a surge of children being admitted with a respiratory illness. the world hea organization said after reviewing data from china the illness does not appear to be a novel pathogen and does not pose a global threat. the u.n. health agency advised against any travel restrictions based on theurrent information. the surge in cases across northern china come amid a rise in seasonal respiratory infections including here in the united states where rsv is rising. and the fbi is saying it's unlikely that terrorism played any role in that deadly car crash that temporarily shut down a border crossing between the united states and canada wednesday. officials say the driver was speeding on the rainbow bridge near niagara falls when they crashed into a border crossing booth, causing the car to explode. the driver and another person in the car died. a customs and border protection employee was treated for minor injuries. in a statement, the fbi said it didn't find anything indicating the explosion was intentional, contrary to some erroneous reporting on another network and some republican lawmakers happy to seize upon it and blame the biden administration, claiming it was terrorism, when the fbi believes it was simply an accident. still ahead, we'll examine the longstanding conflict between israel and the palestinians. conflict between israel and the palestinians - [narrator] what will you do when the power goes out? 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great in my book! who are you? no power? no problem. introducing storm-ready wifi. now you can stay reliably connected through power outages with unlimited cellular data and up to 4 hours of battery back-up to keep you online. only from xfinity. home of the xfinity 10g network. welcome back. the planned release of hostages from gaza coming any moment now. it will be nearly seven weeks after hamas launched its devastating terror attack on israel. while it has felt like an eternity to the israelis and palestinians living through it, it's only the latest chapter in a conflict that has been raging for generations. josh lederman has the story of one israeli family whose history is intertwined with the arab/israeli conflict. >> for more than a century, arabs and jews have balloted over the sacred stretch of desert between the mediterranean sea and the jordan river. this family have been fighting and dying on this land for five generations, living and breathing one of the world's most intractable conflicts, now erupting once again in the israel/hamas war. >> i pride to grow in this family. >> it started with joseph bren brenner. he fled the russian army, part of a wave of jewish immigration toward palestine and became an icon, writing dozens of books about life in the diaspora. >> this is where joseph brenner was murdered in 1921. hundreds of arabs and jews died in that violence. more than a century later, this street looks nothing like it did back then, and yet the violence hasn't stopped. his son's fight would be for israel's independence. he joined the jewish underground army and became a commander. his son remembers when his father jumped out of a tank and broke his back, in a body cast for months. he was promoted to second in command, his old battalion taken over by prime minister rabin. ♪♪ >> later that year rabin was a assassinated. he commanded a platoon in the six-day war in the sinai peninsula, now egypt. he was in syria fighting in the war with three others from his kibbutz. they were all killed, he says. the call came from benjamin netanyahu's brother and he was off to uganda on a secret mission. they rescued more than a hundred hostages from a plane hijacked by palestinian militants. given how many people you have lost in your life to these wars, how do you feel about your grandchildren now serving in this war? i worried when my kids served and now my grandkids, he says. his daughter worries too about her daughter now serving on the front lines. she works in the israeli prison service in the dental unit, now caring for some of the hamas terrorists who attacked israel on october 7th. do you feel like you have to separate your own feelings from doing your job? >> of course. no choice. >> have you given up on the possibility there could be peace? >> yes. now, yes. >> but the brenner family will keep fighting, she says. josh lederman, nbc news, israel. still ahead, the first wave of hostages, 12 thai nationals have just been released by hamas. we'll have details on that, including a live report from the west bank. report from the west bank. in the u.s. we see millions of cyber threats each year. that rate is increasing as more and more businesses move to the cloud. - so, the question is... - cyber attack! as cyber criminals expand their toolkit, we must expand as well. we need to rethink... next level moments, need the next level network. 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