Can I simply soak fruit and vegetables in water for several hours to sanitize them?
Washing fruit and vegetables in water is less an exercise in sterilisation and more a case of simply washing off any mud or debris. Soaking in still water does nothing to clean, well, anything really. Even if you sterilise the water and container, the fruit itself will still be teeming with bacteria which would be perfectly happy to multiply in stagnant water.

Simply wash the fruit/veg under a briskly running stream of water to remove any major dirt. There is unlikely to be anything terrible on fruit or vegetables in any case, assuming you have a healthy immune system.

If you really want to reduce bacterial load, the only solution is thorough cooking.