For those keeping score, Hamas has now:

[Arazi]

81. There have been US civilians captured and held hostage

in war zones - most notoriously in WWII where Americans were captured and held in Japan and Germany (close to 20k between the two countries iirc but would welcome a fact check).

Other conflicts have also had civilian hostage taking before Gaza like ISIS capturing Yazidis, Boko Haram seizing the Chibok schoolgirls etc.

While soldiers try to work around ensuring their lives are spared, in general, the war just proceeds. If they can be safely retrieved - great but afaik, no country is tasked with stopping their defense because hostages…(except Israel 🙄 ). The US certainly didn’t try to stop bombing in WWII - mostly because we didn’t even know where the civilian hostages were which is fairly normal.

Hostage taking in wars is a very very ancient issue - probably one of the most common issues - and I’ve never read of a conflict where a country was ordered to ceasefire because of it