US President Donald Trump on Friday said he thinks a ceasefire will be reached in the Gaza Strip “within the next week.”
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he just spoke with some of the individuals involved in trying to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal, without further elaborating.
The remarks came amid reports that Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is due to visit Washington next week for talks on Gaza and Iran. Trump is reportedly pushing Israel to wrap up the ongoing war with Hamas after the brief conflict with the Islamic Republic, and is seeking to expand the Abraham Accords.
After offering his assessment on a potential ceasefire, Trump pivoted to highlight the recent US decision to donate $30 million to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been distributing boxes of food in Gaza from militarized zones in the Strip for the past month.
“It’s a terrible situation that’s going [in] Gaza… and we’re supplying a lot of money and a lot of food to that area because we have to,” Trump said.
“We’re, in theory, not involved in it, but we’re involved because people are dying,” he continued. “I look at those crowds of people that have no food, no anything.”
Trump then lamented that some of the aid is being stolen by “bad people,” but said that the new GHF system was “pretty good.”
However, GHF has been marred by near-daily mass casualty incidents in which the IDF has opened fire at Palestinians trying to reach their distribution sites.
Trump said other countries should be helping address the aid crisis. Other than the US, countries have stayed away from GHF, due to its controversial mechanism that has required Gazans to walk long distances and cross IDF lines in order to pick up food.
On the other hand, the UN-backed mechanisms in Gaza have been marred by looting. Aid groups say the issue would be addressed if Israel increased the amount of aid in Gaza, so that demand would go down. Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation the terror group denies.
An average of just 56 trucks a day have been entering Gaza over the last month — far below the hundreds per day that aid groups say is needed to address the dire need.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 56,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.