Will the looming attack on Rafah force the release of all the hostages?

Benny Gantz, the tough Israeli war cabinet member, former general and ex-defence minister, has effectively thrown down the gauntlet to Hamas: release all the remaining hostages by the start of Ramadan (March 10), or else the offensive against the Gaza city of Rafah in the south will go ahead. Rafah is where around 1.3 million Palestinians are living in crowded, tented camps, with nowhere else to go. So in a matter of three weeks the full force of the Israel Defence Forces will attack the city to find the Hamas leaders who are believed to be hiding in tunnels beneath Rafah. That's three weeks for Hamas to release the hostages, now believed to be around 130 but with up to 50 already dead. Since the hostages are Hamas's main leverage for stopping the IDF from entering Rafah, the chances of them doing a deal with Gantz, let alone Binyamin Netanyahu, would seem to be remote. Hamas is probably hoping that the whole world will apply pressure on Israel to abandon thoughts of attacking a city where pretty much the whole population of Gaza has sought refuge. Down in the underground tunnels and bunkers I have no idea how well attuned the Hamas leaders are to what's going on above ground in the rest of the world, but I guess they have a pretty good idea that Joe Biden is against an attack on Rafah and so, too, is the whole of Europe. But the gauntlet has been thrown. Since it is reported the current ceasefire talks between the US, Israel, Egypt and Qatar are going nowhere, Rafah is going to be the decisive place where the war in Gaza either goes Israel's way or it leads to a much wider conflagration.