US President Donald Trump on Friday said he expected the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold because “they’re all tired of fighting,” after Israeli forces pulled back in Gaza as part of the first phase of the deal he brokered.
“It’s a great deal for Israel, but it’s a great deal for everybody,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “I can tell you that I saw Israel dancing in the streets, but they were dancing in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, many, many countries.”
Trump noted the hostages are due to be released on Monday following the IDF’s completion of a partial withdrawal, with Hamas “getting them now” before they are freed from the Gaza Strip.
“They’re in some pretty rough places under earth… only a few people know where they are… They’re also getting approximately 28 bodies. Some of those bodies are being unearthed.”
Trump confirmed he will meet a “lot of leaders” in Egypt on Monday to discuss the future of devastated Gaza, adding that the meeting would likely be in Cairo. He noted he will also address the Knesset when he visits Israel earlier that same day.
The Axios news site reported that the summit in Egypt, organized by the country’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, aims to build international support for Trump’s Gaza peace plan, as talks continue over critical issues such as post-war governance, security and reconstruction.
According to the report, invitations have been extended to leaders or foreign ministers from Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not expected to attend, a US official told Axios.
While there, Trump is expected to participate in a signing ceremony with the three guarantors of the Gaza deal: Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.
In his remarks at the White House, Trump said he was confident that the Gaza ceasefire will lead to a wider Middle East peace.
“Now we have some little hot spots, but they’re very small… They’ll be very easy to put out. Those fires are going to be put out very quickly,” he added.
He also said Hamas has lost 58,000 people. Earlier this week, he put the figure at 70,000. The Hamas-run health ministry’s death toll is currently at over 67,000 killed in Gaza since the terrorist group’s October 7, 2023, attack that started the war, though the unverified figure does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine meanwhile released a joint statement Friday rejecting any “foreign guardianship” over Gaza, stressing that its governance is a purely internal Palestinian matter.
The terror groups also expressed their readiness to benefit from Arab and international participation in the reconstruction of the enclave.
Additionally, they said they would agree to abide the US-mediated deal despite Israel’s refusal to free a number of the prisoners they are demanding, though a senior Hamas official said the terror group was in contact with mediators about several Palestinian terrorist leaders who Israel has refused to free under the agreement, including Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat.
“The movement (Hamas) is insisting on their release and negotiations are still ongoing,” Mousa Abu Marzouk told the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV network.
He said Israel turned down several other proposed names. When asked if those included Abdullah Barghouti, Hassan Salama, Ibrahim Hamed and Abbas al-Sayyed, he replied, “Yes. These are the most prominent names that the occupation always rejects.”
Israel released the list of prisoners slated to be released earlier Friday and began notifying families whose loved ones’ killers are set to go free, though Hamas’s Prisoners’ Ministry said there was no agreement yet on the identities of the prisoners to be freed, and Qatari-owned network Al Araby TV cited sources saying the list omitted some names that mediators had agreed on.
Of the 250 prisoners to be released, 15 will be freed to East Jerusalem, 100 to the West Bank and 135, who were convicted of either murder or weapons production, are slated for deportation to Gaza or elsewhere, according to the government decision published Friday.
Israel will additionally release 1,722 Gazans, including 22 minors, detained amid the Gaza war who were not involved in the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught, according to the government decision. Of the 1,722 Gazans, 1,411 are in Israeli Prison Service custody and 311 are in IDF custody, the decision said.
Israel will return “360 Gazan terrorists’ bodies,” the decision said, without specifying if any of those Gazans had taken part in the October 7 massacre. On Thursday, Hebrew media reported that Israel had rejected a Hamas demand that it return the bodies of the brothers Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar, who successively led Hamas before Israel killed them last October and this May, respectively.
Israel will release the prisoners and the bodies immediately, and only, after Hamas releases all remaining 48 hostages, including 20 who are alive, 26 confirmed dead and two for whose lives there is grave concern, the decision said. The hostages include 47 of the 251 abducted in the October 7 invasion, and the remains of a soldier killed fighting in the 2014 Gaza war.
Under the ceasefire-hostage deal, Hamas was given 72 hours to release the hostages once the IDF completes its initial withdrawal. The military said Friday at noon that it had completed its withdrawal, meaning the hostages would need to be released at the same time on Monday, and the Palestinian prisoners and bodies shortly after that.
However, Hamas has said it would need more than 72 hours to unearth the remains of slain hostages. A classified appendix to the government decision released Friday details the measures Israel would take if Hamas failed to release all 48 hostages in time, according to the decision.