A ship­ment of med­i­cine for dozens of hostages held by Hamas was en route to Gaza on Wednes­day af­ter France and Qatar me­di­at­ed the first agree­ment be­tween Is­rael and the mil­i­tant group since a week­long cease-fire in No­vem­ber.

The med­i­cines ar­rived in Egypt and were on the way to the bor­der. A se­nior Hamas of­fi­cial said that for every box pro­vid­ed for the hostages, 1,000 box­es would be sent in for Pales­tini­ans. The deal al­so in­cludes the de­liv­ery of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to res­i­dents of the be­sieged coastal en­clave.

The agree­ment came more than 100 days in­to a con­flict that shows no sign of end­ing and which has sparked ten­sions across the Mid­dle East, with a dizzy­ing ar­ray of strikes and coun­ter­strikes in re­cent days from north­ern Iraq to the Red Sea and from south­ern Lebanon to Pak­istan.

Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants are still putting up re­sis­tance across Gaza in the face of one of the dead­liest mil­i­tary cam­paigns in re­cent his­to­ry. Some 85% of the nar­row coastal ter­ri­to­ry’s 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple have fled their homes, and the Unit­ed Na­tions says a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion is starv­ing.

Is­rael has vowed to dis­man­tle Hamas’ mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ing abil­i­ties to en­sure the group can nev­er re­peat an at­tack like the one on Oct. 7 that trig­gered the war. Mil­i­tants burst through Is­rael’s bor­der de­fens­es and stormed through sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties that day, killing some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and cap­tur­ing around 250.

Is­rael al­so has promised to re­turn more than 100 hostages still held in­side Gaza af­ter Hamas in late No­vem­ber re­leased most of the women and chil­dren held cap­tive in ex­change for Pales­tini­ans im­pris­oned in Is­rael. Is­rael says on­ly mil­i­tary pres­sure will bring about the re­lease of more cap­tives, who are at in­creased risk of be­ing killed in Is­raeli strikes or dur­ing res­cue op­er­a­tions as the fight­ing grinds on.

Hamas has said it will not re­lease any more hostages un­til there is a per­ma­nent cease-fire, some­thing Is­rael and the Unit­ed States, its top al­ly, have ruled out.

A WEL­TER OF STRIKES ACROSS THE MID­DLE EAST

In the past few days, a U.S.-led coali­tion has car­ried out strikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen; Iran has struck what it de­scribed as an Is­raeli spy head­quar­ters in north­ern Iraq and an­ti-Iran mil­i­tants in Pak­istan and Syr­ia; and Is­rael and Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah have es­ca­lat­ed the in­ten­si­ty of their fight­ing across the bor­der.

Iran’s mil­i­tant al­lies across the re­gion say they are strik­ing U.S. and Is­raeli tar­gets to pres­sure the two coun­tries to halt the Gaza of­fen­sive. Iran it­self has en­cour­aged the at­tacks while avoid­ing di­rect in­volve­ment, but ap­peared to be flex­ing its mus­cles with the strikes in Syr­ia and Pak­istan.

The Houthis have vowed to con­tin­ue at­tack­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping in the Red Sea in what they say is a block­ade of Is­rael, with reper­cus­sions for glob­al trade.

Each par­ty ap­pears to be seek­ing some form of de­ter­rence against its ad­ver­saries. But the longer the war in Gaza lasts, the more like­ly it is that one of them goes a step too far, po­ten­tial­ly trig­ger­ing an­oth­er war.

The biggest risk is along the Is­rael-Lebanon bor­der, where Is­rael has vowed to halt Hezbol­lah at­tacks so that tens of thou­sands of Is­raelis can re­turn to their homes in com­mu­ni­ties evac­u­at­ed in Oc­to­ber. Hezbol­lah hopes to take the pres­sure off Gaza by ty­ing down Is­raeli troops in the north.

Ten­sions are al­so soar­ing in the oc­cu­pied West Bank, where Is­raeli forces have con­duct­ed near-dai­ly ar­rest raids that of­ten trig­ger shootouts with Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants.

Is­rael said Wednes­day that an airstrike in the ur­ban Bal­a­ta refugee camp in the north­ern West Bank killed five peo­ple. They in­clud­ed a se­nior mil­i­tant who was in­volved in re­cent at­tacks on Is­raelis, the army al­leged. Over 350 Pales­tini­ans have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.

HEAVY FIGHT­ING IN GAZA

Is­rael said at the start of the year that it had large­ly dis­man­tled Hamas in north­ern Gaza and would scale back op­er­a­tions there, fo­cus­ing on dense ur­ban ar­eas in the cen­ter and south of the ter­ri­to­ry. Ad­di­tion­al Is­raeli forces with­drew from Gaza on Mon­day, but there has been lit­tle ap­par­ent let­up in strikes, with scores of Pales­tini­ans killed every day.

Gaza’s Health Min­istry says 24,285 Pales­tini­ans have been killed since the start of the war. The min­istry does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ian and com­bat­ant deaths but says around two-thirds of those killed were women and chil­dren. Over 60,000 peo­ple have been wound­ed, and less than half of Gaza’s hos­pi­tals are even par­tial­ly func­tion­ing.

Is­rael blames the high civil­ian death toll on Hamas be­cause it fights in dense res­i­den­tial ar­eas. Is­rael says its forces have killed rough­ly 9,000 mil­i­tants, with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence, and that 190 of its own sol­diers have been killed in the Gaza of­fen­sive.

Mil­i­tants are still fight­ing in all parts of the ter­ri­to­ry, and Is­rael ap­pears no clos­er to free­ing the re­main­ing hostages. The deaths of two more hostages were con­firmed Tues­day af­ter Hamas said they were killed in Is­raeli airstrikes.

AID BOUND FOR HOSTAGES AND PALES­TIN­IAN CIVIL­IANS

France said it took months to or­ga­nize the ship­ment of the med­i­cines. Qatar, which has long served as a me­di­a­tor with Hamas, helped bro­ker the deal that will pro­vide three months’ worth of med­ica­tion for chron­ic ill­ness­es for 45 of the hostages as well as oth­er med­i­cine and vi­t­a­mins. Sev­er­al old­er men are among the re­main­ing hostages held in Gaza.

Mous­sa Abu Mar­zouk, a se­nior Hamas of­fi­cial, said in a post on X that the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross will de­liv­er all the med­i­cines, in­clud­ing the ones des­tined for the hostages, to hos­pi­tals serv­ing all parts of Gaza.

An Egypt­ian of­fi­cial con­firmed the ship­ment had ar­rived at the el-Ar­ish air­port and said the Egypt­ian Red Cres­cent res­cue ser­vice was trans­port­ing it to the Rafah bor­der cross­ing with Gaza. The of­fi­cial was not au­tho­rized to brief me­dia and so spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

Se­nior U.N. of­fi­cials have warned that Gaza faces wide­spread famine and dis­ease if more aid is not al­lowed in.

Is­rael com­plete­ly sealed off Gaza af­ter Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack and on­ly re­lent­ed un­der U.S. pres­sure. It says there are now no lim­its on the en­try of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid and that U.N. agen­cies could re­duce the de­lays by pro­vid­ing more work­ers and trucks.

But U.N. of­fi­cials say aid de­liv­ery is hob­bled by the open­ing of too few bor­der cross­ings, a slow vet­ting process, and con­tin­u­ing fight­ing through­out the ter­ri­to­ry — all of which is large­ly un­der Is­rael’s con­trol.

Magdy re­port­ed from Cairo and Lid­man from Jerusalem.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) —