US and allies consider options for releasing Hamas hostages

ABC News:

The U.S. is keeping all options on the table as negotiations to free scores of hostages in Gaza press on — playing a significant role in advancing talks between Israel and Hamas while actively formulating plans with international partners for tactical recovery operations that could be put into action if it's determined they could be carried out with a reasonable level of risk, according to two American officials.

The U.S., along with Qatar and Egypt, is working to move Israel and Hamas toward a deal to free many of the more than 200 captives Israel assesses are being detained, potentially including some of the 10 Americans that are still unaccounted for following Hamas' surprise terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.

On Friday, President Joe Biden spoke with the emir of Qatar to discusses "the urgent need for all hostages held by Hamas to be released without further delay."

Despite the push for diplomacy and reports that both sides were close to reaching an accord earlier in the week, a senior State Department official said on Friday that the U.S. was still unconvinced a deal would be reached.

Multiple sources confirm to ABC News that Israel and Hamas are discussing an arrangement that would exchange at least 50 hostages, mostly women and children, for a multi-day truce as well as the release of an unspecified number of Palestinian women and minors detained by Israel, but that both sides had not reached a consensus on specific details.

Although Biden expressed varying levels of hope through the week that a deal would happen, a senior administration official says Israel and Hamas have been close to an agreement at various points in recent weeks, but that each time, those talks had broken down in the final stages.

In the early days of the conflict, officials said that the circumstances on the ground in Gaza made any kind of targeted attempt to physically extract hostages untenable. While recovery missions always come with inherent danger and the U.S. believes a brokered deal is the best option for securing a large number of the detainees, sources say tactical plans are being developed in case circumstances change.
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The various potential courses of action unfolding simultaneously against the intricate web of diplomatic negotiations reflect the unparalleled complexity of the Gaza hostage crisis, which involves a massive number of individuals now believed to be held by Hamas and other terrorist groups through various locations in the besieged enclave for more than 40 days.

"There are a few different things that can make hostage takings and hostage recovery negotiations extremely complicated. This hostage situation has all of them," said Danielle Gilbert, a member of the Bipartisan Commission on Hostage Taking and Wrongful Detention at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and political scientist at Northwestern University.

Gilbert points to the lack of information available about the hostages' wellbeing and the likelihood that Hamas will want to retain a significant number of detainees for leverage during future negotiations, as well as the deep distrust between the parties.
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Both the US and Israel have successfully made raids on hostage takers.  The Israeli raid on Entebbe was even the subject of an interesting movie.  I suspect a raid of some sort has a better chance of freeing the hostages than a negotion with Islamic terrorist who already mudered thousands.