There is “clear progress” towards a potential new hostage exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, after CIA director Bill Burns flew to Warsaw for negotiations with Israel’s spy chief and Qatar’s prime minister, says Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem.

However, as Israel points to mid-January as the timetable for the “next stage of the war”, there is concern Hamas may decide “just to sit tight” until then “to see how things play out,” Fisher says.

Hamas may wait until mid-January “to give up any of the captives and use them as a bargaining chip when things actually start to change on the ground,” he adds.