We're going to take you to some live images right now over northern Gaza. You can see what we've been watching are a combination of flares and what appear to be strikes as night begins to fall over there in Gaza. And, of course, as we've been monitoring, the Israeli military says it's still been targeting Hamas infrastructure ahead of the truce that doesn't take effect until tomorrow morning. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyah has vowed to continue the war after the fighting pause, saying it won't end until, quote, hamas is destroyed, all the hostages are released, and there is nobody in Gaza who can threaten Israel. So we're going to continue to monitor some of these images as we welcome our next guest, CNN military analyst and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, general Wesley Clark. So, obviously, we've been watching some of these images here. There was a question of how perhaps intense strikes would be in the lead up to the actual moment this truce took effect. And so we're expecting it to begin at 03:00, a.m. Eastern time. And this maybe precedes my question, but what do you expect to happen leading up to that moment?

Well, first of all, I think the strikes will be as intense as Israel has targets for. There'll be no slacking off until the exact moment of the truce. And I'm sure that this was an issue that was really hammered out in the cabinet. I'm sure there were voices saying, you can't give a truce. You've got to go through with this. You've got to finish the job against Hamas. And so the Israeli military will be pressing to do as much as they can during the truce period. Omar, they're going to still have the right to. And, you know, it's a very strange you call it a truce, it could be called a pause, it could be called a temporary ceasefire. But whatever you call it, there's no enforcement mechanism, so there are no independent observers on the ground. And what normally happens when something like this kind of a pause occurs is maybe the shooting stops for a while, but pretty soon it starts again because someone feels threatened and they have the right to self defense. After the period of four or five days, assuming the hostages get released on schedule, unless there's a continuing release of hostages beyond the 50, as Prime Minister Nanyaj said, he's going to resume, and this is going to be the real struggle.

There'll be strong political forces, pressure on Israel not to resume. So how this gets resolved is the key strategic problem for Israel.

And for those just tuning in. We're monitoring the scene over Gaza right now. We've been seeing some flares, combination of what appear to be some strikes going into Gaza, as well as night begins to fall, and obviously under 20 hours to when this truce was set to effect. This is, of course, before then. Now, when we look, General, at some of the details in this deal, four to five day pause. But what does a pause like this typically mean, militarily? What can and can't you do, essentially in a time frame like that?

Well, when it starts, let's look at it from the Israeli side. They'd like to replenish, relax, get a break for the troops that are in frontline contact. But can they really trust AMAs? So there'll be a period of doubt here, and they'll have to keep their guard up and they'll consolidate their positions. They're inside Gaza, but they don't control Gaza. There are tunnel entrances. They're being shot at from behind on some occasions, so they don't really have any security in there. Maybe they'll rotate some troops in and out on the AMAs side. They're going to use it to consolidate, replenish, resupply, reorganize, try to reestablish communications, and be ready for the next wave of the Israeli fighting. So this is a humanitarian effort. There'll be some humanitarian assistance that comes in. Unless there are some really strange, strong controls here, hamas is going to get what it needs out of that humanitarian assistance and replenish its own fuel stocks or whatever. So let's get the hostages out. That'll be a great thing. But this is far from over, Omar, and it's very dynamic. It's really hard to predict where it's going to go.

And it's not just on the ground that we're looking at here. US and Israel both pausing drone flights over Gaza as part of this hostage deal as well. Per senior White House official and to one of your points that you made, israel's government has made clear they plan to resume its air and ground campaign to, quote, complete the eradication of Hamas after this truce, temporary pause, whatever you want to call it. But also, they've left the door open to continue these pauses by an additional day for every ten hostages who are released. So how do you expect Israel to try and balance their goal of hostage release, but also with their goal of destroying Hamas?

That's the tough call, and it's a really tough political call on Netanyahu and his war cabinet, because the military knows that Hamas to win a victory for Hamas is they've used the hostages and they've survived this, and then they emerge as heroes among their followers and supporters, the Iranians, the Hizballah, and these other Palestinian jihadi groups. They will use the hostages eventually. They hope Israel will lose its appetite for continuing the fight, and Hamas will say, Ah, we made it. It was a successful operation. Israel knows this. Israel knows that if they don't eliminate Hamas, that it will set the stage for future operations like this, perhaps by His Bella coming out of Lebanon. So this is a really tough call. In the past, Israel has turned loose a thousand prisoners to get one Israeli soldier back. So the weight on Israel is human life. Israeli human life is the most important overriding factor but this is the first time that Israel has declared an existential threat. According to Prime Minister in that yahoo, this is Hamas is an existential threat. Maybe that changes the calculus. There are all kinds of dynamics that make it very unpredictable, Omar.

Yeah. And of course, and I should mention again, as you've been talking, we've been seeing these flares and what appear to be strikes happen as night begins to fall. There so a lot of dynamics to keep an eye on even ahead of this long negotiated truce or pause, or whatever you want to call it. General Wesley Clark. Thank you so much.

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