four-times indicted ex-president. nbc news is reporting on potentially game-changing revelation base the former vice president, mike pence. we'll have more on what pence told special counsel jack smith's investigators later this hour. but first, we want to get to the fast-moving developments out of the middle east. at this hour, we are getting our first glimpse of the latest hostages to be released. here are some of the faces of the 12 prisoners released by hamas today, 10 israelis and 2 thai nationals. notably, many are older. among them, a mother and daughter who were kidnapped together. a retired kindergarten teacher. a grandmother of nine. and the 84-year-old founder of one of the kibbutz that was raided on october 7th. this is now day five of the extended truce that for now, barring another extension, is expected to last through tomorrow, for six days in total. as we know, it is a fragile truce and a fluid situation as underscored by the events of just the last 24 hours with, quote, each side accusing the other of violating the truce, israel saying explosives were detonated and militants fired on them. hamas is alleging its fighters had engaged in a field clash provoked by israel. but for now, the truce is holding. and while it does, there are intense diplomatic efforts to keep it that way. the first of three u.s. military flights carrying humanitarian aid has landed in egypt. the 54,000 pounds of food and medical supplies on board that flight are ultimately bound for gaza, where they will be distributed to the civilians there by the united nations. meanwhile, in doha, the cia director, bill burns, is meeting with the held of israel's spy agency, mossad, and with qatari officials. "the washington post" characterizes it as a secret meeting and brokering an expansive deal between israel and hamas. burns is pushing for hamas and israel to broaden the focus of their ongoing hostage negotiations, thus far limited to women and children, to encompass the release of men and military personnel, too, as well as a longer, multiday pause in the fighting, and crucially, the midfield release of american hostages held by hamas, end quote. that last detail is particularly crucial given that no american hostages were released today. that's where we start this hour with nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel in tel aviv. richard, thank you again. it's late night for you there. tomorrow is the last day of the extended truce. prime minister netanyahu has indicated willingness to let this go on for more days if ten hostages are released at a minimum per day. but this morning there was a skirmish in northern gaza and an aircraft above gaza, an israeli aircraft. they're going to run into problems with hostages that hamas says they don't have control over, with men, with members of the military who are being held by hamas. where do you see this going? >> reporter: well, every day it seems like you're fortunate that the cease-fire is holding, and the families here are increasingly concerned that the cease-fire could break down. i was at a square here in tel aviv, generally now called hostage square, and families there were saying -- advocating for their particular relatives, saying put them on the list. we want them out now before the cease-fire either breaks down or expires. as you mentioned, it is close to expiring, tomorrow, and judge big the pace of events, it looks like ten israelis came out today, so ten plus two, ten israelis and two thai nationals. and a similar number is expected, ten and perhaps some other foreign nationals as well, ten israelis tomorrow. so, that would leave many, many families incredibly disappointed, incredibly concerned that their loved ones got neglected, got knocked off the list for whatever reason. and then of course there's the situation of all the men. right now we're just talking about women and children. yesterday was primarily children who were released, a few women, two women, nine children. today it's almost all elderly people, including some in their 80s. so, what about all the men? what about the men who are civilians, men who are above fighting age? so, there is a concern here that we could be in the hours. certainly, we are technically in the final days unless there is some sort of extension. that's why that meeting you mentioned, that secret meeting, which everyone is now talking about in doha, was so important. >> this is the great thing about talking to you, because you're on the ground talking to people. at the same time, you have a broad understanding of what's going on in the rest of the world. doha in qatar is the central place for the negotiations right now. the head of the cia is at the secret meeting with the mossad. obviously, everything that needs to be said has been said before. americans want the american hostages out. they'd like this to go longer. they'd like the pauses in fighting to last longer. yet, there's a great deal of shuttle diplomacy going on. antony blinken is headed back to the middle east again. what is happening or not happening that moves us toward a resolution in this issue? >> reporter: they're talking about expanding the negotiations to include more hostages, so not just to have women and children up for discussion but potentially to have some of the men, or the most sensitive of all have some of the younger men and women, people that hamas considers to be soldiers. if you start talking about those issues, the most sensitive of the hostages, then automatically you're talking about larger issues. you're talking about the blockade of gaza. you're talking about the right of hamas to continue to rule gaza. israel insists, and the united states agrees, that after october 7th, hamas lost the ability to control the gaza strip. hamas was elected into power years ago and had a coup kicking out its rival and has been in power ever since. israel's approach to dealing with it has been to cut off the gaza strip, to build fences around it, build an immensely expensive and complex electronic network around gaza of cameras that hamas was able to get around, figured out a way to beat it. so, how do you get out of this? do you convince hamas to step down? do you convince hamas that it needs to play a different role, incorporate it into a larger palestinian government? as far as i know, those longer-term conversations are not being had or not being had explicitly at this stage. so, you ask what is lacking, i think the longer-term vision of what's happening is lacking. but first, we sort of need to get out of this crisis. the families i was talking to a short while ago are desperate that they only have one more day to get their relatives out, and if it's only going to be ten people potentially tomorrow if it doesn't break down, that's going to leave a lot of disappointed families, a disappointed nation, let alone the men and women who aren't under open discussion at this stage. >> let's talk about the palestinians. the deal is roughly three palestinian detainees for each hostage released. the palestinian detainees are released from prison to the west bank, not to gaza, obviously. we're seeing images of them reunited with their families, in some cases the criticism coming from the israelis is they are wearing hamas flags or, you know, somehow they have hamas paraphernalia on them. these are people who are held in some cases without administrative charge for small crimes. we don't know when they went into prison whether they were hamas supporters or not. but for the last few years, a lot of people have been killed in the west bank, a lot of settler violence. i think there's military action under way in some places. that is a hot zone creating more palestinians who are unhappy with the control israel exerts over their lives. where is that situation coming into play in all the discussions we're having? >> reporter: so, where does the west bank come into play? the west bank is fundamental to all of this. but first it's the question of who are the palestinians who are being released? they are as you describe them, low-level detainees. some were never actually sentenced to jail. they were rounded up. they were in the tribunal phase or the evidence-gathering phase, in kind of a pretrial detention. i'm familiar with one of the people on the list, someone who was just detained a short while ago, and according to people who know her quite well, she's innocent. so, the palestinians in the west bank will say what israel has been doing has been building up stock. they've been looking for people to arrest on in some cases very trivial -- for very trivial reasons in order to have a lot of people on hand so that they can have them to trade. that's what seems to be happening at this stage for the women and children. for the next batch, the more sensitive batch, the people that israel -- hamas considers soldiers, the younger men and women, and the actual soldiers, the people hamas detained who were in uniform, hamas in the past has asked for people like that for hardcore militants, people with blood on their hands, real hamas activists who israel does not want to release. so, that phase of the moon has yet to come. at this stage, we're just seeing very low-level people being released, and the reason it seems some of them are wearing hamas banners or scarves is to thank hamas. they got them out of jail by using pressure. but obviously, it's something that israel finds incredibly distasteful that they would be released from jail in what israel is considering an act of good will and then put on a hamas scarf moments later. a lot of people find that disturbing and offensive. where does the west bank fit into this conflict? there are two governments here to, as you know very well. you've been to gaza. hamas is the government, is a kind of dictatorship government. it took over by force after being elected. in the west bank, you have a very aging leadership, the aging leadership of the palestinian authority, which has almost no popularity since the death of yasser arafat. there hasn't been a single unifying palestinian leader. you have the weak west bank leadership under mahmoud abbas. that's the palestinian authority president. and then you have in gaza hamas, which is an extremist group which carried out the october 7th massacre, killing 1,200 people and taking hostages, including babies. there's a 10-month-old baby held in gaza right now. i was with members of his family. a toddler. it's his brother also held, 4 years old. the whole family was taken. and they are still in gaza tonight. what kind of group takes a 10-month-old baby hostage? and it is unclear where that baby is right now. hamas, according to the israeli military, gave the family, including the two children, over to another militant group. so, hamas has lost its credibility. israel says it's lost its right to govern the gaza strip. and the palestinian leadership in the west bank is incredibly weak and has no credibility among the palestinian people. so, how do you get out of this? and there are some talks. i've been talking with israeli intellectuals and others that you need to think differently. perhaps they need a new leader. perhaps they need to free an inspiring leader from an israeli jail, marwan, a unifying leader, the most popular palestinian after yasser arafat. and he was someone who could have potentially replaced yasser arafat as a unifying leader for all palestinians in the west bank and gaza. but he's been locked up for decades. some israelis are starting to say, well, maybe he should get out. maybe we need to change the calculation and not have two governments and have one unifying government that israel can work with that represents palestinians in both territories, the west bank and gaza. we're not there yet. it's unclear if those secret talks in doha have gotten to this stage yet or if they're talking about what kinds of hostages can be released. the easier ones, the women and children, or the much more complex ones, the military-aged men and women. >> and marwan barghouti has renounced the use of violence. some israelis are increasingly looking toward someone like that as potential leadership in the future. we're very far from that. richard, thank you. richard engel for us in tel aviv. i want to bring in admiral benoit, the executive director for doctors without borders. thanks for being with us. so much of this conversation is about the hostages and their terrible situation and the prisoners that are being released into the west bank. but there's another very, very, very big story going on here, and that is while there is a pause in the fighting, aid is getting into gaza. the u.s. plane has landed with 54,000 pounds of medical aid and food. tell me about that story. is this making a dent? is this helping in any meaningful way to allow trucks into gaza and allow people like your staff to work there? >> well, jonathan for having me. i would say yes, it's helping, but not in a meaningful way. we are coming from so far behind with the people who, under siege, lacked everything -- food, water, medications, shelter. now we've got more than 80% of the population of gaza, more than 2.2 million people, are said to be displaced. and the hospitals are just full. the hospitals that are still functioning. let's not forget that many of them have ceased functioning as a result of either a lack of medication, a lack of fuel to run the generators and all the machinery, the equipment to keep people alive, or much more disturbingly, a complete lack of protection. so, the way this war has been led, all-out war, collective punishments against the people, we have seen time and again that medical facilities, hospitals, clinics, also ambulances and the staff inside, doctors at the bedside of patients, there have been attacks on them. and this is something that outrages us because the medical system is on its knees, barely functioning at all. so, the team that we have trying to support hospitals in the south, nasser hospital in particular, but during this pause, able to have a look at what else is needed, just cannot even fathom how this number of trucks that you mentioned -- yes, it looks helpful -- is going to come anywhere close to meeting the needs. >> from our perspective, richard and i were talking about the talks going on in doha, looking for an extension in the pauses to get more hostages out, from your perspective, the hostages and prisoners, there is a very large population of people, 1.8 million at least displaced so far, and the rest of the people in gaza were not displaced but are living in war conditions, and you need more than ten days of pause in order to allow these people a chance of living in some cases, getting normal health care. we're not just talking about trauma injuries. we're talking about dialysis and cancer and births and things like that. >> yep. it's absolutely true. and, you know, we hear, isn't it wonderful, 200 trucks coming in one day. before this, when you were at the blockade, you had 500 trucks a day. now, with the weeks and weeks and weeks of this total siege, you can imagine that the amount that we need to catch up just to be able to assist people and save those lives is enormous. people are going to be dieing if they haven't already in large numbers. we just haven't got the full count of it. they'll die of infections, dying of blood loss. there are all kinds of things that are happening in these hospitals that, yes, the last couple of days of this truce has allowed us to catch our breath a little in the medical community to try to at least not have a constant influx of mass casualties, huge numbers of people arriving all at once with catastrophic injuries and burns, so you're able to assess things, change some of the dressings, check on the stocks. what we're seeing is there is so much more that needs to happen in order to allow people to get the health care that they need to get through this. and that's not even to mention all the people who are just at home malnourished, dehydrated, and i say at home in quotes because so many are living in rubble and crammed into apartments. there is a lot of concern about communicable disease. there are reports of acute watery diarrhea but no capacity to test if that's cholera. you can imagine with the lack of sanitation and clean water what a catastrophe that would be and how deadly for the population of gaza. >> you don't do it for accolades, but on behalf of us, thanks to your staff at doctors without borders for the very difficult and important work you're doing. thank you for starting us off today. 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