processing. we are just living through until every one of these hostages are home and our soldiers are safe. >> 16 hours until the truce set ises in. so much to come. thank you. thank you for joining us. this is "cnn news central." "inside politics" starts now. welcome to "inside politics." i'm in today for dana bash. 15 hours from now, we're expecting the first of dozens of hamas host amgs to walk free out of gaza. they have been captive since october 7th. now the first hostages to be release d are expected to be women and children. in exchange, israel agrees to pause its assault on gaza for four days, release 150 palestinians from israeli prisons, and allow more humanitarian aid into gaza. that could include hundreds of trucks carrying fuel and sup supplies. now for families of the missing, the past 46 days have been unbearable. these next few hours will be just as intense as they wait to find out whether their relative will be among those freed. >> my family, like all the other families, is going to go through a terrible week. we don't know if they are dead. we don't know if they will be released. >> nobody is giving up hope. it's just that we actually need to see abigail come out and then we will be able to believe it. >> we want a chance to see our loved ones back. this is all we want. i really hope this is just the first step. >> now even if this deal is carried out successfully, some 200 hostages are remain. but the hope is that this is a turning point in this war. cnn is covering the story from all angles. oren liebermann is in tel aviv. we have mj lee at the white house. we're going to begin with oren. what's the next step in the conversation? >> reporter: we're now 15 hours away from this pause in the fighting taking effect, at which point israel and hamas will put a hold on this war and shortly after that, we expect the transfer of hostages. it's over the course of four days. somewhere in the range of 10 to 12. we don't know if they will all come out at once. we don't know how they will come out and if it will be as the other hostages came out way at beginning of this war or if there's a new plan to bring them through one of the other border crossings. crucially at this point in speaking with the families, it seems they haven't heard who is coming out yet. that's what part of what makes this so nerve wracking for them. they want to know if their loved ones are part of the 50 that come out in the first group, but that is unclear. on the flip side of that, an exchange for the release of hostages held in gaza, there will be the release of palestinian prisoners also women and children, 150 of them for the first 50 israeli hostages released. it's unclear who on that list comes out from israeli prisons. we have looked at that list of 300. it is largely considered smaller offenses, such as throwing stones, or connections to a terror organization. so not any of the major offenses. most of those palestinians are from the occupied west bank or jerusalem. we'll see how that process plays out. we are also at the psalm time seeing ongoing fighting in gaza. large scale israeli airstrikes from the video we have seen coming out of there, red alerts indicating possible rocket fire from gaza. it's important to note that that does not mean the agreement is off. it simply means the pause in fighting hasn't started yet. we still have every expectation it will take effect at 10:00 tomorrow morning. so nerve racking moments for the families as we wait to see this agreement take effect here. and what the world hopes will be a larger possibility for a cease-fire but benjamin netanyahu promising the war is still on when this pause is over. >> thank you so much. three host amgs are expected to be u.s. citizens. one name on that list is abigail edon. she's supposed to celebrate her 4th birthday on friday. when this deal was announced, president biden issued a statement where he said, quote, the deal should bring home additional american hostages and i will not stop until they are all released. cnn's mj lee joins us now from the white house. first, give us some background about how the deal itself came together and what the president's role was. >> reporter: yeah, we know that there were weeks and weeks of pain staking negotiations that ultimately got us to this point. what we have learned is that shortly after october 7th, there was a top secret channel of communication that was established, including just a small number of white house, israeli and qatar officials to essentially negotiate with hamas about the hostage situation. of course, what we saw last months was the release of those two american citizen women from gaza, and when that was successful isly executed, it essentially signalled to u.s. officials that they had a bit of a blueprint in place to effectively negotiate with hamas over these hostages as slow going that communication was at times, but there were many, many challenges that u.s. officials and the israeli counterparts and qatar officials confront ed whe trying to negotiate with hamas. we learned that hamas was refusing for a period of time to offer any identifying information about the hostages. this turned out to be a major sticking point. we also learned that in recent days, hamas, for a period of time, went dark. just was unresponsive when messages were sent to them. when they finally resurfaced, they raised issues about israel's idf raid on the hospital until all of this made for sort of a painfully slow and touch and go process throughout the weeks that the negotiations were going on. there were many, many phone calls and conversations that took place between president biden and other top aids here and their counterparts in the middle east region as well. some of these conversations, we're told, were so sensitive at the time, that they weren't even read out in realtime, which is pretty unusual. now what the white house is hoping for is that three american hostages at least could be among the 50 that are released here. here's john finer earlier today. >> we know there are three americans, we believe, held in gaza in that category. two women. it is our strong expectation they released in this group. until we see people coming out of gaza, won't know who is being released. that's what underscores the imperative of getting all these people out of gaza as soon as possible. >> reporter: just the execution of their release is going to be incredibly complicated as well. not to mention, for these women and children, there's just a very long road ahead in terms of their rehabilitation and making sure that they can get the medical help that they need. >> thank you so much. now this pause in the fighting is, as we said, set to start tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. local time. but that does not mean that the bombardment of gaza has stopped. idf spokesperson is here talk about what happens next. welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> as we said starting tomorrow, if all goes well, hostages will be released, but it also means the pause in fighting for potentially to regroup. how does this complicate things for your military strategy going forward? >> just on the brief comment. the people being held by hamas, the emotional roller coaster that's being reflected in the reports that you just broadcast, the emotional roller coaster of an entire country being torn to pieces by the actions of hamas or this terrorist organization just kplem if is why hmass need to go. we'll receive our instructions from the government. we will hold fire. we will take up defensive positions in order to be prepared for any attempt of hamas to try to take advantage of the situation. there was a chance they will regroup. >> is that why bombing has continued. are you trying to make some areas inhospitable for them? >> we have not had an instruction to hold our fire at this stage. that's why we continue to seek out, destroy and dismantle hamas wherever they are hiding. we have continued to fire rockets. we are destroying our capability, taking out their cells wherever they are operating. indeed, making sure they are pursued. the reality on the ground is one that the war is ongoing. even if there is and when the operational pause comes into force, it will be be over when the hostages are res leased. then we will continue our operation as the government has directed uses. >> are you prepared to hold if more hostages are released? >> this is what we understand, according to the plan, that's been widely publicized. this is one of our goals of this war is to bring home the hostages. every last one of them. this is the reality and this is what we need to aspire for. hamas cannot be allowed to hold the israelis and foreign nationals that they abducted and are hold ing them hostage in th gaza strip. we need to bring them home. we need to bring them home now. hopefully tomorrow we will see the first installment of that. >> the goal has been to eradicate hamas. at the same time, that has meant going after people in urban environments. is there any thought to having a safe zone or a no-strike area to help protect civilians? >> we have a humanitarian zone in the southwestern part of the gaza strip. indeed, we have seen a huge evacuation from people from the north to the south, and hand in hand with the operational pause, it's an increase of humanitarian aid of trucks that are supposed to come in order to alleviate the dire situation that people of gaza are facing. >> are those areas safe from strikes altogether? >> the areas in the south, there are still hamas operations in the south. but on the though hamas have fired rocket trs that area, we have not responded because we realize that that needs to be a safe zone. a humanitarian zone. a place where people can escape. as much as possible. the reality unfortunately is hamas will continue to operate from in, around and beneath hospitals. they will continue to launch rockets to u.n. sfilts. >> so you consider those limits not off limits still? >> wrr they hide, they will take them out. they can never, ever be permitted to wield the power of government because we saw what happens when they have the power of government. they utilize the power of government. and enslaved all of its powers in order to build a terrorist army that came into our towns, came into ourv villages, brutaly murdered, raped, beheaded and abducted over 1,300 people. so we have no choice but to make sure that hamas can never have this power ever again. >> we know that there's a list of palestinians who could be released in this deal. they include women, a lot of teenagers, their charges range from throwing stones to harming regional security. what concerns do you have about who might go free? >> of course, this list is compiled by the prison service and the other security services. the idf is more involved in aiding and engaging the terrorists on the ground. it's of concern. and it is what the government has decided to do. we will implement the government's decision to the latter. >> lieutenant colonel, thank you so much for speaking with us. >> good evening. we're going to continue the following news about the hostage negotiations. we're also going to hear from an israeli writer and journalist from the jetton. stay with us. the families of those held hostage hamas spent days pressuring the government to prioritize bringing their loved ones home. those families have become a unified and powerful voice in israel. to help us with the context behind this deal, we have writer and journalist. first, i just wanted to start with the fact that the families have really pushed bringing hoemg the hostages being the number one priority, but they have been concern ed that all o this was getting lost amid other priorities. did this deal help calm those concerns? >> yes, indeed. but it's not just the families. most of the form er are in favo of a deal an all out deal or for a deal in phases, as we are expecting to be materialized tomorrow. so the public was behind the deal. i think eventually, after a few weeks, the government cave d in to the public pressure, to the former officials pressure, and eventually realized that it should be a number one priority or at least equivalent with the other goal of the government, which was the first goal to smash hamas and to dekcapitate its leaders. >> so what were the fault lines that began to appear during the debate? you said the government has been reluctant. what were some of the voices saying? >> there were voices saying once there was a cease fire orb the israeli government it would weaken the determination of the military to continue the war. but i think it's the wrong impression. the fact is that the government decided that these two goals to release the hostages should be on the same foot. so militarily speaking, i don't think if there's four or five days, it would stop the military, the israeli forces to continue the war. >> i want to ask one question to that point. that accompanying push for a humanitarian pause for a cease-fire, as you're saying that could go longer than would meet the goal of eradicating hamas. >> well, the idf has been very, very cautious and sensitive to the palestinian casualtcasualti. however, it's a war. a lot of people have been killed. i think the pal stint figures are 11,000 or 12,000. a lot of them are children. so the israeli public is concerned about it. but above all, it is more concerned about trauma, which occurred on october 7th. and about the future and the destiny of the hostages. and therefore, it's a less of a public concern. >> thank you so much for this perspective. >> thank you. now as we said, the families of the 236 hostages held by hamas wait to see if their loved ones will be among those 50 released as part of the deal. we're going to speak to an israeli man who escaped hamas on october. however, his brother is still missing. we'll talk about that family's hopes and their story, next. you want to be able to provide your child with the tools or resources they need. with reliable internet at home, through the internet essentials program, the world opened up. fellas, fellas. that's how my son was able to find the hidden genius project. we wanted to give y'all the necessary skills to compete with the future. kevin's now part of this next generation of young people who feel they can thrive. ♪ ♪ israel and hamas are hours away from a truce. one that'slikely to last for just a few days. dozens of hostages are set to be free d after hamas fighters ripped them from thundershower home six weeks ago. this pause in fighting is set to begin at 10:00 a.m. local time. but until then, the idf continues its assault. theses are explosions seen in northern gaza earlier today. cnn's jeremy diamond joins us. can you talk about what you're seeing across the border there in gaza? pz. >> just over 14 hours away from the beginning of that expected truce between israel and hamas, we are continuing to hear outgoing artillery, large explosions inside the gaza strip, and that's a scene that we have been witnessing over the last several hours. when it was daylight here, we could see several large plumes of smoke in different parts of the northern gaza strip. and also seeing some of those illumination rounds being fired into gaza as well. as the israeli military indicates clearly it will continue toer carry out its military operations to take out hamas forces and infrastructure inside gaza up until that truce goes into place. in the meantime, what we are witnessing and hearing across israel is the anxiety, the anticipation of many of these families of the children and women being held hostage inside of gaza as they wait to see whether or not their family members will be part of that initial release of 50 women and children, hostages we leased over the next four days. many of those families, some of whom i have spoken with today, are in the dark about whether or not their families will be part of this round. i spoke to a man whose 12-year-old daughter is believed to be held in gaza, and he's opti optimistic, but he doesn't want to get his hopes up until he knows she's alive and will be crossing back into israel. >> jernymy, thank you. i want to turn to this hostage crisis in more depth. 236 people are being held captive in gaza. several nationalities. ask we have learned about many of them through their friends and relatives. now in israel, the hostages and missing families forum is a group that formed in the wake of the october 7thth attack. they count just over 200 israelis who are believed to be alive and still in gaza. here's some numbers for you. 39 of them are children, including a 10-month-old. 29 are seen your citizen, including three people who are 85 years old. and 44 of the hostages are women. i'm joined by the blowers of one of the hostages. and his younger brother, they were at the music festival on october 7th. they were separated during the attack. he only learned his brother had been kidnapped when their parents said they saw a hostage video online. first, i just want to welcome you to the program. i know that this is a difficult day. >> it is. thank you so much. >> we understand right now it's supposed to be women and children who are included in this initial hostage agreement. u.s. officials say this could pave the way for additional hostages to be released. does that give you hope that your brother could be among them? >> i still haven't received an official note about the deal. so even if it's real, everything thr say ing about this deal, i don't really think my brother will be included in this deal. so it's kind of really hrd for me to think. >> what is it like been trying to navigate this? it's not clear sort of who to negotiate with, which countries are involved. for the families, what has this process been like? >> to my family, it's been i think one of the hardest weeks we had to go through. we keep hearing about deals that can be made. we hear a lot about it, but every time it changed. every day we hear something different. every time we hear about it, they are speaking about a small amount of hostages, if you look at all the hostages, there's more than 200. we know it could make the deal where my brother should be back to us. there could be a lot of time until we can get another deal. that makes us very worried. even though it's hard to be d disappointed about any life that's being returned to us, and we have a big priority to get out and bring back the kids and the women and the people who need medical attention most. >> in the meantime, have you encountered any additional information about your brother specifically? i foe you learned about his capture on social media. do you know about his health or his location? >> no, we haven't heard anything. if he weren't be included in the deal, rlet the red cross get a message from him or any sign of life, any information about his condition, we are desperate to know anything about him. >> you've been outpoken about the importance of remembering the hostages. i know when you traveled to the u.s. earlier this month, you took part in a march for israel. does this kind of alleviate your fears that the hostages were somehow being forgotten? >> of course, because when there are children and women involved, it makes people more -- it made them be more involved in the situation. i said it last time. my brother is only 22 years old. he hasn't started his life yet. he had so many plans. he believes in peace and love. he shouldn't be used as a currency in had this war. it's very hard for me to think about the cease-fire without getting my brother back, but to really live in peace, we need to get them all back. so that's the situation. it's so hard right now. >> i want to thank you and let you know that our thoughts are with you and your family. >> thank you so much. next we're going to talk about how much credit the biden administration might deserve for the break thrust with this deal. and will american voters reward him for it? we'll dig into the politics of that, ahead. welcome back to "inside politics." while president biden has had trouble getting the american people on board with his handling of the war, israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu took a different stance today. >> translator: in the last few days i talked with the president of the united states joe biden, i asked for his intervention in order to improve the outline that he presented to you. it was improved. so that it would include more hostages and less prices. these talks bore fruit. president biden got involved, and i thank him for that. >> correction there, that's audio from yesterday. i want to bring in our political panel. jonah goldberg, nancy cook, and francesca chambers. i want to start with francesca. the public policy is you have seen with joe biden has been to hold benjamin netanyahu close, but then behind the scenes, we know he was probably talking a little more specifically about how to get this it truce deal to fruition and what would be required. what do we know about how the white house is feeling and what their strategy is going forward? >> the strategy going forward is they hope this can serve as a pilot program to get the rest of the hostages out, and you have heard many lawmakers today saying while this is a good first step and they welcome the release of these three americans who we still don't entirely know their identities, they would like to see the rest of them out. they think this is also a good step towards getting more aid into gaza. now how quickly under their deal could come together, we do not know. it's certainly something that the biden administration says that they will be focused on moving forward. >> when biden first made his speech, when more broke out, i think there was a lot of commentary that he looked sort of strong and strident and t taking a position for a u.s. the president, but it doesn't mean that people still approve of his foreign policy. that's what we're seeing. over time we have seen a real decline over the last couple months. you can see there way back in march, you had had 55% of people approving his foreign policy. that's down now in march 2022 40%. now the number is down to 33%. how significant is this? i feel like americans have a shaky commitment to foreign policy issues. >> frankly, i think american voters have a shaky commitment to issues, period. and if you look the at his approval rating on all sorts of issues, they kind of track his approval rating generally. basically, i'm skeptical about some of this. i think he's just unpopular for all sorts of reasons with the economy, age, all that. and so you plug a topic next to his name, how do you think he's handling that and that goes down too. >> with a withdrawal from afghanistan, it already was a kind of mark against him. but across the board, is this just about any issue or significant? >> i think there's two reasons that the foreign policy stuff is really significant and the decline of that approval rating. foreign policy is supposed to be one of his key areas of exper tees. it was something he was very focused on as a senator. it's something that he will try to draw a contrast against former president trump when the campaign really heats up in 2024. and so i think that's the first problem for him. but the second part is these foreign policy issues, both the ukraine war and the israel-hamas war, are very time consuming for any president. it just takes time away from what they need to also be thinking about, which is his reelection campaign. >> it's complicated by how the kras are talking about this. what are you seeing? beyond what people talk about, how are democrats struggling with their anti-war undercurrent and the reality of this moment? >> it's a problem with younger voters, because young er voter, they need to turn out and younger voters are split on the issue of younger democrats are split on these issues. and it saps the enthusiasm and gives oxygen to some of the independent party like cornel west, which has to scare them given how sennarrow margins are. >> is the white house worried about this split? what are you hearing? >> i think so. even though they are saying publicly they are not concerned about the polling, they certainly know this is an issue for them. the white house said this week that it's not their job to change americans' minds about this, but the campaign has said that it is their job at least to fill the gap and bring people along. that is what you'll end up s seeing the campaign do. as far as it being time consuming, we know while the president was at apeck just after his meeting with xi jinping hosting these 21-member economies, he was also on the phone cutting a deal to try to get these hostages home. so just another example of how his attention is being pulled in different directions. >> he's trying to show strebt and vigor, but there are people in the party who see him vulnerable. we have had an entrance into the race with the superpac that is supporting dean phillips. and he's a candidate who says that his latest ad hits biden on his age. i know that feels like everybody is hitting biden on his age. what's significant about this moment? >> i think what's significant is just that biden is sort of taking it from all sides. he has dean phillips, who is starting to buy some ad time in the boston area market. we also have these third-party threats from third-party candidates potential ly. rfk jr., cornel west, never mind the threat of a potential no labels candidacy. so one by one, i don't think any ofs those people are going to be the democratic nominee, but what they could do is eat into his support among democratic voters and just take people off bit by bit. >> as a matter of political history, the phillips is novel. normally they start within your own party is about a set of issues. this is just a guy saying i agree with him on everything. i just think he's too old. >> what's your thesis about it not being about issues though? we're going to talk a lot about the split on the left over -- we have been talking about the split over the left over the israel-hamas were. we're going to talk about conservatives and the right. please s stay with u us. you've heard a lot about anti-semitism on the far left from targeted attacks on college campuses to hateful comments circulating among some progressives. there is also anti-semitism that is simmering on the far right. this has come up because of a very online internet kerfuffle between candice owens and ben shapiro. can you talk about why you think this is surfacing the way it is specifically kind of the maga right? >> part of it -- obviously, there's some faction of the far right, new right, maga right, whatever you want to call it, that is legitimately anti-semitic. there's a population of people who love to boost engagement by fomenting outrage -- >> but they've had a discussion about what does it mean to be america first, how far does that go? and i thought that was intriguing. was america first really a doctrine? >> donald trump adopted it and he had no idea about its anti-semitic beginnings. the supply of plausible hot takes that stoke outrage has been -- cannot meet the demand for them. going after the jews or jewish financiers, it attracts all the right anger from the people that boosts engagement as well. and elon musk has gotten himself into this mess and given them the excuse to come to the defense of elon musk. a big part of it is cynical monetization of outrage. >> let's see the tweet from elon musk. because especially he cosigned, liked a theory from somebody that looks very, very close to what has been called replacement theory which is a sort of general idea that there are mysterious powers rooted in the democratic party, et cetera, that are trying to replace white voters with minority voters who will vote in their direction. of course jews as a community are often lumped into this conspiracy theory as well which is extremely old. what do you see in it coming out now? >> i think what we saw dating back to, you know, trump's presidency and what happened in charlottesville and his inability as a president to condemn white supremacists walking through that town really gave rise to a lot of people feeling much more comfortable to express all sorts of -- >> who were chanting almost this exact thing. >> right. since then and since -- you know, he really broke the mold of republican and presidential politics has given rise to not just online fights but very really, you know, ability for people to feel comfortable publicly expressing anti-semitic views, racist views, and i think we've seen that play out again and again. and i think it's important not just to talk about it in the context of, you know, an online fight between two online personalities, that's how they make their money. i feel like we're seeing it throughout american politics and throughout the country. people feeling much more comfortable expressing discriminatory or anti-semitic views. >> getting the attention of the white house at all? how are you getting this? >> absolutely. and doug emhoff, the second gentleman, has been focusing on this issue, of course, as well as the president and other people in the white house. but just building on the point that you were making, jonah, taking it to the next level, then you have lawmakers who are not disassociating themselves from this kind of rhetoric. you had eric ericson saying that until people stop giving to these groups, they disassociate from the money of these things, these will continue to happen and him calling it -- saying that that's basically complicity with evil is what he said. >> we're going to leave it there for just a moment. i want to thank you all for tackling this. not an easy topic. i appreciate you being here. and we want to thank you for joining "inside politics." "cnn news central" starts right after this break. ♪